Edgar Hoover couldn't be bothered to help the negro. Woodrow Wilson made things worse by creating segregation in the Washington DC area during his term in office. Teddy Roosevelt tried to change things with very little luck. The United States Federal courts looked away for the most part as it was "out of their jurisdiction".
Corporations like US Steel and banks like Wachovia were owners of some of these endeavors. In a lot of ways it was worse than slavery as the whites who worked these blacks had no care for their welfare as there were always more convicts to get. The white man (usually the sheriff or judge themselves) would sell their contracts for these men to a mine or farm or factory and the black men would be indentured to these men until they were no longer useful or died. Then they would tell these men that their only hope would be to let this white man pay their fine and then they could work it off. They would arrest black men for not having any money in their pockets thus being "vagrants" and fine them 20 dollars.
This was a money making venture for sheriffs and judges in the South. For example a white man found riding the rails was sentenced to 10 days labor while a black man would be sentenced to 2 years or more for the same offence. What this book does is document the so called convict workers and how the majority of convicts were blacks and treated much differently than whites for similar crimes. I am not saying it was only in the Southern United States as people are racist all over and a lot of other states made it impossible for blacks to feel safe in those areas. While I have always thought that the South treated blacks differently than other parts of the United States, I never dreamed it was worse than ever for them until after World War II. This was an eye opening experience for me.
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