"We weren't under the jurisdiction... so they started jailing us": the 13th Amendment exception
Record: the document says itPattern: documents line upLens: our readingOpen: not yet proven
Year: 1865 · Places: Gulf Coast, Oklahoma & the Five Tribes
SUMMARY"We weren't under the jurisdiction... so they started jailing us": the 13th Amendment exception (Nov 4, 2026). Tito: "WE WEREN'T UNDER THE JURISDICTIONS BECAUSE WE NEVER SUBJECTED, SO THEY STARTED JAILING US. THAT'S THE SLAVERY WE'RE FACING RIGHT NOW."
RECORDthe 13th Amendment (1865) bans slavery and involuntary servitude "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The Black Codes (1865–66) made vagrancy, "loitering," and changing employers into crimes. Convict leasing followed: states rented prisoners to mines, railroads and plantations (Alabama ended it in 1928; Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, 2008). Today Black Americans are imprisoned in state prisons at nearly five times the rate of white Americans (Sentencing Project, The Color of Justice, 2021)
PATTERNthe jurisdiction question (P230: "subject to the jurisdiction," Thomas's dissent) and the prison exception sit side by side. Freedom came with a clause that let servitude continue through the courts
LENS (WW9)the nations were never subjected, so the system brought them under its jurisdiction through the jail. WARNING, keep the community safe: "I'm not subject to your jurisdiction" as a defense in traffic court or criminal court (sovereign-citizen / national-paperwork arguments) is rejected by US courts every time, often with harsher outcomes. Teach it as history and politics, never as a courtroom move
OPENthe jurisdiction language in the freedmen and Dawes rolls, and when each family was moved onto the paper. Needs deep research.