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The Plantation Never Died: How Incarceration Fuels the Corporation Slavery did not end in 1865. It evolved. The plantation was never dismantled; it was absorbed into the corporation of white supremacy. What once happened under the whip now happens under the law. The same system that auctioned Africans on blocks now auctions prison contracts. The same hunger for Black labor, Black profit, and Black control still feeds—only the chains have changed. \ From the moment the 13th Amendment carved out its exception—"except as punishment for crime"—the corporation had its loophole. Freedom was offered with one hand and stolen with the other. Black life was criminalized, policed, and funneled back into the system, not as citizens, but as assets—bodies to be tracked, exploited, and controlled. This was no accident. Vagrancy laws, Black Codes, and convict leasing became corporate policy long before mass incarceration had a name. The courts, the police, the prisons—all became subsidiaries...

The Corporation Exposed!

The corporation thrives on illusion. Its greatest trick is not its money, not its laws, not its armies — it is the illusion of power itself. Like the Wizard of Oz, it projects a fire-breathing monster onto the wall: booming voice, smoke, flames, terror. The people bow, afraid to question.

But pull the curtain back, and the truth is small. Behind the monster are not giants, but little men — trembling, pulling levers, desperate to protect their profits. The spectacle was never strength. It was always fear.

And in America, the monster has always been given a Black face. For centuries, misinformation has painted Black lives as the threat. 

During Reconstruction, newspapers warned of “Negro rule” to justify Jim Crow. 

During the Civil Rights Movement, organizers were smeared as “outside agitators” to excuse police batons and dogs. In the 1990s, politicians invented the myth of “super-predators” to expand prisons and strip young Black men of their humanity. 

And today, protest is branded as “riot,” demands for equality are called “chaos,” and the movement for Black lives is painted as terrorism.

Each flame on the wall serves the same purpose: to hide the machinery behind the curtain. While people tremble before shadows, corporations profit from fear. Prisons become billion-dollar industries. Bail becomes a business model. 

Weapons manufacturers make fortunes arming police against the very communities they are sworn to protect. Politicians trade in fear to win elections, then sign contracts and policies that funnel money upward while stripping resources from Black schools, hospitals, and neighborhoods.

The brilliance of misinformation is that it does not have to convince — it only has to confuse. Drown the people in noise, and the truth loses its gravity. Repeat the lie until the lie feels safe. Keep the flames dancing on the wall so no one asks who is working the machine.

But once the curtain is pulled back, the game is over. The smoke clears. The fire dies. The monster vanishes. And the wizard — the corporation — is revealed for what it is: small, scared people hiding behind noise, terrified that we might see the truth.

The fire was never real. The curtain was. And the cost of that illusion has always been paid in Black lives.