Years ago I happened to see Pulitzer Prize winning author Douglas A. Blackmon being interviewed on his new book “Slavery By Another Name”. As a student of history this was a chapter of our history which I knew nothing about.
Of course I knew about the civil war, reconstruction, Jim Crow and the civil rights movement, but this, this was an eye opener.
I checked out the book from my local library and started reading. I was not prepared for what I would read.
From the book jacket.
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.
I was stationed at Ft. Rucker Alabama and Hunter Army Airfield outside Savannah Georgia between my SE Asia adventure and had seen the grinding poverty and the segragation which still existed at that time (1967-1970) so I had some understanding what was up. Other tales I could tell about that time, but back to the book.
As I was reading, the narrative was so appalling that at times I became nauseous and had to stop and go outside and get some fresh air. It took me more than a week to read it and my understanding was raised to a new level.
Just as my experience in Viet Nam opened my eyes to the stupidity of war, this book ripped my eyelids off to the cruelty, the inhumanity and greed that drove a system of racism that did not end until the start of WWII. Racism after WWII is another dark chapter for someone else to write about.
PBS did a documentary based on the book.
Here’s the trailer.
It should be required reading in any American history class.