Indenture for "...Colored Children Named William, Dennis & Henry," July 20, 1866

Immediately after the Civil War, defeated white Southerners tried to remake the South as they had known it before the war. With slavery abolished, some whites devised labor contracts which forced African Americans back into near-slave conditions. This indenture, imposed on three orphaned children, required them to work for a white master until they came of age.