World Famous Comics: Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
By: Douglas A. Blackmon Publisher: Doubleday Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Doubleday Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 480 Publication Date: March 25, 2008 Release Date: March 25, 2008
In this groundbreaking historical exposé, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history—an “Age of Neoslavery” that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II.
Under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests. With no means to pay these ostensible “debts,” prisoners were sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries, and farm plantations. Thousands of other African Americans were simply seized by southern landowners and compelled into years of involuntary servitude. Government officials leased falsely imprisoned blacks to small-town entrepreneurs, provincial farmers, and dozens of corporations—including U.S. Steel—looking for cheap and abundant labor. Armies of “free” black men labored without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced through beatings and physical torture to do the bidding of white masters for decades after the official abolition of American slavery. The neoslavery system exploited legal loopholes and federal policies that discouraged prosecution of whites for continuing to hold black workers against their wills. As it poured millions of dollars into southern government treasuries, the new slavery also became a key instrument in the terrorization of African Americans seeking full participation in the U.S. political system.
Based on a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Slavery by Another Name unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude. It also reveals the stories of those who fought unsuccessfully against the re-emergence of human labor trafficking, the modern companies that profited most from neoslavery, and the system’s final demise in the 1940s, partly due to fears of enemy propaganda about American racial abuse at the beginning of World War II. Slavery by Another Name is a moving, sobering account of a little-known crime against African Americans, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.
Powerful, but exaggerated All the abuses discussed in this book are accurate, and the author does a fine job in bringing them to life. But the books leaves the reader with the impression that all black workers in the South were virtual slaves, who were forced to stay with the same employer year after year. This is simply not true. Many African Americans switched jobs year after year, to the frustration of planters. Others migrated, sometimes alone, sometimes en masse (e.g., the Kansas Exodus, the Edgefield Exodus) to other parts of the South. Labor agent Peg-Leg Williams moved over 80,000 people from the Carolina southwest all by himself. And so on. The real history is bad enough, no need to exaggerate it. For the relevant sources, see the footnotes to David E. Bernstein, Only One Place of Redress ch. 1 (Duke U. Press 2001), which discusses one way planters tried to limit black mobility, through laws banning labor recruitment.
pleased that the book came in good condition.
I am pleased that the book came in a reasonable amount of time.
Better late than never -Not what I learned in school. But this book opened my eyes to the truth of our American History, and caused me to think about what I see in society today, differently. I would recommend it highly!
This is a must read There were times when I read this book I was in a fury with rage, when I was completely dumbfounded, flummoxed, horrified, disturbed (deeply) by another chapter of our good country's history. Yet there were also times when I was proud of those portrayed here who were moral and just -- folk who sought to cleanse the countryside of those who thought nothing of life, except to take advantage of it until there was nothing more to give. This richly researched, sharply written book is an essential read.
Powerful and disturbing - a must read. As an historian, I have long been aware that slavery did not end the evils perpetrated on black people in this country, but I never realized the full extent. Although this book is at times repetitious and disjointed, it is a powerful narrative of a period in American history arguably more disturbing than ante bellum slavery. It's as though all the humane slave masters have been replaced by Simon Legrees and Bull Connors. The complicity of corporate America and the emergence of industrial slavery make the situation even more problematic. This book needs to be read by all who want to fully understand the ramifications of history on race relations in this country and should be required reading in high school and college classrooms.
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