Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

Additional Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II Information

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.

What Customers Say About Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II:

The author puts this ugly area of U.S. I'm sure this book will be a landmark in U.S. history reading. history in a new light for those of us schooled in the 20th Century. The story is told from a perspective that makes sometimes dry factual material come to life with moving accounts of the plight of neo-slavery blacks and the society that allowed this to happen.

This was a very good book. The economic head start enjoyed by one segment of the population at the expense of another is what this convenes. Examples are given of how the Greeks rose against the Turks or Spain, Italy and Portugal against the Moors. It speaks volumes to the debate about reparations. Young men of African descent in America should read this book to understand how far we have come and respect themselves through intellect, hard work and better mental discipline for the rest of the road to go. I am not for reparations. The author this book captures but a small part of American history. It is interesting that when we see the problems in Iran moderates and conservatives in this country say these people should rise up for their democratic freedoms.

The country that is the United States of America does not acknowledge the damage that it inflicted upon its non-European contributors to this countries growth and expansion. While this focuses on the economic, social, physical and mental oppression visited upon the former slave population it shows a people who tried to be better than their oppressors. But when you speak of John Brown, Denmark Vesey or Nat Turner they are not considered to be freedom fighters when they were also seeking a better world as the founding Fathers when they rebelled against the Queen and Great Britain. Slavery now is less about race but more about the mental shackles of class, poverty and adoration of hooliganism.

This book is not only a reminder but is evidence that there are many people who appear to be kind but are really not, and who will go to extreme lengths to justify themselves.

The owners of mines and factories leased these men so they had no incentive unlike plantation owners in keeping them healthy. Recently, I went into decent bookstores looking for histories of the Jim Crow era and come away virtually empty. School segregation meant bad schools for blacks, lack of literacy, little opportunity to gain new skills. The period after 1880,in some ways a more brutal time for African Americans than slavery.

Mr. "Slavery by Another Name" looks at the economic development of neoslavery; the process by which local law enforcement obtained pay for arresting and prosecuting black men for petty or nonexistent crimes and turned them over to mining companies or brick-makers. These men were forced to spend their prison terms, often years, if they lived that long, working more than 12 hour days in harsh, unsanitary conditions six days a week. This is a hard book to read because it uncovers a secret ugliness that white American has been unwilling to face for decades. Black people had their families ripped apart and communities destroyed by these "legal" means of oppression.Fast forward to our times with so many black men stashed away in prisons for drug possession crimes. These black men were given minimal medical attention and many died in atrocious conditions not fit for livestock.Neoslavery in some form persisted until World War II and of course segregation and the inability to vote, lasted until the nineteen sixties.

So many blacks were transient and poor they they were perfect fodder for local sheriffs to arrest on vagrancy or similar charges. Deprived of the ability to vote through poll tax and other laws, blacks couldn't vote out of office the local sheriffs who treated them so poorly.

I recently heard a black man joke that he should get an award for being alive at 25 and never having been imprisoned. Sure there are books about slavery and the Civil War and the civil rights era but the period in-between was ignored.This book tells you why.

Blackmon points out that its no wonder that so many black people have such distrust of law enforcement. They only paid for the use of these men.

There were plenty more to be found. They experienced arbitrary, injust and often brutal treatment by white law enforcement during these years.

Seems that the oppression and racism of neoslavery continue in a different guise.

I recognize the irony in advocating the forced reading of a book about post-Thirteenth Amendment slavery. In fact, Blackmon musters next to no evidence to support his contention: Just a couple of federal prosecutions and some vague talk about new farming and mining technologies.Lastly, I would've liked to see more endnotes. I don't doubt that everything he says is true; I just would've liked to have been able to see exactly where he got each bit of information from, so that I could follow up on certain things if I felt like it. In other words, that slavery's a sad but currently inconsequential chapter in American history. Forget that it's a damning exposé of white criminality, savagery, and cowardice in the postbellum United States. Blackmon's very well researched tome will smash any such delusions.Slavery by Another Name only has three problems. But I think that altogether too many people in this country indulge in a fantasy that slavery in the United States ended so long ago that it is no explanation for and should have no bearing on anything today. Too many times, Blackmon states something as fact without citing a source for his assertion.

One is that it's shot through with poor grammar and awkward word choice. I'd have thought that a writer for the Wall Street Journal would be a master of syntax and diction, but I'd have been wrong.Also, Blackmon's thesis that slavery finally ended for good with World War II fails to convince, especially in light of the then-Attorney General's bigotry and the then-FBI director's apathy. That said, Blackmon's bibliography is excellent.And again, I think everyone should read this tome. Its main value is in its evisceration of the idea that black Americans have no one to blame but themselves should they find themselves in any kind of economic, academic, or legal predicament today.