Though this was a difficult book to read, I highly recommend it. It is important we understand what we know as the Industrial Prison Complex, or Mass Incarceration did not begin after the Civil War per se. The reader is left to wonder how those of the past would react to today’s prison system. The plantations of the South would eventually become…the prisons, and some of the largest in the country. One could argue that was not what was intended. This book leaves much to discussed and would definitely leave the reader wanting to research more on how incarceration prior to the Thirteenth Amendment affected prison system, and the freedom struggle of Black people in America.