Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Definitions Better Than Webster's: Part 13

VAGRANCY:
"Vagrancy, the offense of a person not being able to prove at a given moment that he or she is employed, was a new and flimsy concoction dredged up from legal obscurity at the end of the nineteenth century by the state legislatures of Alabama and other southern states. It was capriciously enforced by local sheriffs and constables, adjudicated by mayors and notaries public, recorded haphazardly or not at all in court records, and most tellingly in a time of massive unemployment among all southern man, was reserved almost exclusively for Black men." -From, "Slavery By Another Name" By: Douglas A. Blackmon

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