More than 25 percent of the state's revenue in 1910 was derived from leasing African-American convicts to private enterprises.
25% of the state being built on a hostage work force is wild. And this obviously clashes with the idea that these were "Self-made" men
The disfranchisement of blacks by the 1901 constitution and suffrage amendment had reduced the Republican Party as an active force in the state. For more than 60 years, until federal civil rights legislation was passed to enforce the constitutional rights of African Americans in the mid-1960s, Alabama was essentially a one-party state, with elections won in the Democratic primaries.
This shows how these problems still persist into living memory. The disenfranchisement of Black and colored is still a problem to this day, and didn't simply end on a single day during the civil rights movement.