In this book, the author found that many historians believed that the practice of leasing convicts in the South was an abuse of African Americans. Although many see it as one of many things that happened in the great arc of the South's racial evolution. The cruel and brutal punishments of blacks were unjustified. The Green Cottenham case was the central event of this book. In his case, the author discovered many problems happening to African Americans after the Civil War, especially the system of forced labor and black prisoner leasing. These were run by Southern state governments, whites, and large corporations. After the Civil War, slaves were free. When the United States Congress passed its first Civil Rights Act, African Americans had the right to vote. They can live as full citizens, for example they could have their own properties, black children could go to school to gain knowledge and can have their own jobs, and they also have the right to obtain political positions. Everything seemed great, but on the dark side many blacks returned to their life as slaves in another form. In most Southern states, county sheriffs and their deputies did not receive regular salaries. So, everyone who is taken to court has to pay fees to these officials. Instead of slave owners, sheriffs and many Southern state governments were the people who had full control of these captives. Green Cottenham was arrested by the sheriff of Shelby County, Alabama. He hadn't committed any real crimes, just like the other black prisoners. They are usually found guilty for stupid reasons, such as changing jobs without permission, vagrancy, riding freight trucks without a ticket, looking at white women, and... middle of paper... a capable thinker. He had faith in making the gap between the conditions of African Americans and white Americans disappear. But not everything was as easy as he thought. Everything was different from the promises made to African Americans at the end of slavery. “Age of Neoslavery” was a shameful chapter in American history. Most of the black prisoners had not committed any real crimes. They had no power to defend themselves. They had no money to hire a lawyer to go to court. They had no choice but to surrender. Their lives were totally controlled by other people. One reason this happened was that blacks were poor; another reason may be that whites in the Southern states thought blacks were part of their property, and after the Civil War, they no longer belonged to them. They could not accept the reality of African Americans living as full citizens.