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Well into the 20th century, black people spoke of their flight from Mississippi in much the same manner as their runagate ancestors had.

Refusing to work meant arrest under vagrancy laws and forced labor under the state’s penal system. A man or woman who protested this arrangement did so at the risk of grave injury or death. When farmers were deemed to be in debt-and they often were-the negative balance was then carried over to the next season. Tools and necessities were advanced against the return on the crop, which was determined by the employer.

Many of Mississippi’s black farmers lived in debt peonage, under the sway of cotton kings who were at once their landlords, their employers, and their primary merchants. The state’s regime partnered robbery of the franchise with robbery of the purse. “You do it the night before the election.” “You and I know what’s the best way to keep the nigger from voting,” blustered Theodore Bilbo, a Mississippi senator and a proud Klansman. Between 18, more black people were lynched in Mississippi than in any other state. The majority of the people in the state were perpetually robbed of the vote-a hijacking engineered through the trickery of the poll tax and the muscle of the lynch mob. In the 1920s, Jim Crow Mississippi was, in all facets of society, a kleptocracy. When he first tried to get a legitimate mortgage, he was denied mortgages were effectively not available to black people. Clyde Ross, photographed in November 2013 in his home in the North Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago, where he has lived for more than 50 years.

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