The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II

[sheshe2]

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II
-Douglas Blackmon


The Age of Neo-Slavery

In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history—when a cynical new form of slavery was resurrected from the ashes of the Civil War and re-imposed on hundreds of thousands of African-Americans until 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 Corp.—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 which 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.

http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/the-book/

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This went on for decades after the Emancipation Proclamation, decades and did not end until we entered WWII. Though it is still alive today when you look at Ferguson and the cash cow...

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DOJ Issues Damning Report On Ferguson Police, Courts


DOJ’s civil rights investigation into the Ferguson criminal justice system found that authorities have routinely violated the rights of black citizens and have used tickets to generate revenue for the city.

Many police officers “appear to see some residents, especially those who live in Ferguson’s predominately African-American neighborhoods, less as constituents to be protected than as potential offenders and sources of revenue,” in part due to city policies, according to the report.

....

The report found that city, police and court officials have “worked in concert to maximize revenue at every stage of the enforcement process” for several years.

“City and police leadership pressure officers to write citations, independent of any public safety need, and rely on citation productivity to fund the City budget,” the report states.

“Everything’s about the courts... the court’s enforcement priorities are money,” one Ferguson officer told federal investigators, according to the report. The report describes several instances of officers abusing their power. In summer 2012, for example, one officer charged a man with violating Ferguson’s municipal code by saying his name was “Mike” instead of “Michael.” The man told the Justice Department that he lost his job as a federal contractor because of that charge along with several others.

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/04/ferguson-police-report_n_6800440.html

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I see so many calls for FDR's New Deal for today, which in many ways was a huge benefit to Americans, yet left out POC. If you look at the timeline and read what Blackmon wrote, the New Deal 1933, for the eight years that it was put in place, the Re-Enslavement of blacks was still going strong and to an extent ended with the start of our entering WWII, it was well known and people/ politicians just looked the other way since slave labor benefited them financially.

So no, you can't tell me that part of the 30's will not follow as it is already here and always has been. That is the truth. We need our own deal not a 1933 deal and we need women and people of all color, LGBT...all making those decisions for our collective futures...not just a few, decisions for us all.

You can NOT have economic justice without social justice at the forefront. You cannot tell more than half the country that their needs must wait.

This is not 1933 this 2017. Past time for new ideas.

[malaise]

1. I bought that book years ago on the recommendation of a DUer

It's first rate

[FLPanhandle]

2. +1

Very eye opening.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

10. That DUer might have been me. I read the book about five years ago, and I

and I couldn't praise it enough here.

If so, I completely agree with your assessment of it.

Douglas Blackmon was the Atlanta bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. He is now at the University of Virginia.

I found the book a real eye-opener. It is that important.

Best wishes.

[malaise]

14. I recommended it to others

[brush]

26. Remember the "economic justice v social justice" argument during the campaign?

I'm not trying to re-fight the primary but one side argued that economic justice would fix all social ills but more knowing ones on the other side knew that social justice had to be fought for just as hard as there are malevolent forces within society that block social justice — vote suppression, hiring/job discrimination, housing/mortgage redlining, police racial profiling/killings, POCs charged higher rates for insurance/services, and on and on and on and on.

The New Deal of the 1930s was a perfect example of economic justice (for whites), but did nothing to fight social justice, in fact, it left black people out in the cold.

This historic example is why the "knowing ones" on the other side of the argument knew that fighting for economic justice is not enough to avoid black people and other people of color from being left out in the cold and damn near re-enslaved.

You have to fight on both fronts.

[malaise]

28. Simply put

Until institutional racism and misogyny are destroyed, everything will still favor those benefiting from the racial and sexual contracts.

[TeamPooka]

13. It did win the Pulitzer prize in 2009.

[sheshe2]

24. Yes it did and well deserved.

A precise and eloquent work that examines a deliberate system of racial suppression and that rescues a multitude of atrocities from virtual obscurity.



Lee C. Bollinger, President of Columbia University (left), presents the 2009 General Nonfiction prize to Douglas A. Blackmon.
Winning Work

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
By Douglas A. Blackmon

http://www.pulitzer.org/winners/douglas-blackmon

[NurseJackie]

3. I'm grateful that you posted this. ESPECIALLY in light of...

... all the other "New Deal" posts, I think that some here would benefit by reading this.

I see so many calls for FDR's New Deal for today, which in many ways was a huge benefit to Americans, yet left out POC. If you look at the timeline and read what Blackmon wrote, the New Deal 1933, for the eight years that it was put in place, the Re-Enslavement of blacks was still going strong and to an extent ended with the start of our entering WWII, it was well known and people/ politicians just looked the other way since slave labor benefited them financially.

You see the truth. You see reality. Others see only what comports to their world view.

This is not 1933 this 2017. Past time for new ideas.

I feel like I'm saying that CONSTANTLY and REPEATEDLY to one or another poster here. (At least daily... sometimes more often. They don't listen.)

[sheshe2]

5. Thank you Jackie.

I am appalled that only old ideas and not new ones are at the forefront. FDR was a great President, yet in 1933 there were other issues at the time, sadly not addressed. I want to make all America the best it can be and that starts with all her people. This is 2017 and we have people of all colors, all religions, men, women and LGBT. I do not want any of us cast to the back of the bus for an economics revival that leave us behind.

I want 2017 not 1933. You can't move forward if you only want to push ideas from the past.

[cyclonefence]

4. After reading "The First White President" in The Atlantic

recommended by a poster here, I want to read this book and have ordered it just now.

Thanks.

[sheshe2]

6. Not an easy read, cyclone.

Yet well worth it. Blackmon won the Pulitzer for that and his research was extensive and difficult. So few records as blacks were not educated then, yet he traced the history. He found many of the mass graveyards of the murdered masses of black bodies.

Glad you ordered that book.

[cyclonefence]

7. I've been a leftie all my life

but only in the past 20 years or so have I become aware of the breadth and depth of government-sponsored racism of the foulest sort, and I am embarrassed by my ignorance. I am a child of the south and grew up well aware of institutional, cultural, casual and dangerous racism (my father's high school yearbook was sponsored by the KKK, and there they are in the frontispiece photo in their hoods); I grew up in a family that got threatening phone calls of "n*gger-lover" because my father was an editorial writer who favored desegregation. Of all people, I should have known, and I didn't. At age 70, I'm trying to fix it.

[sheshe2]

8. You are a good person, cyclone.

You lived through a lot and you know which direction to pursue.

Once you read the book tell me your thoughts.

[ehrnst]

9. Yep. The solutions that relied on segregation nullifying issues of bigotry

won't work now.

Can you imagine one of those government hating "cultural anxiety" white rust belt voters tolerating a woman, POC, or an openly gay man being their supervisor on a work project?

That wouldn't have happened in the 30's, especially as all those "identity issue" type persons weren't included.

[SunSeeker]

11. K & R

[heaven05]

12. +++

teach!!!!

[sheshe2]

17. hi.

just sharing what I have learned.

some posts on the new deal 1933 disturbed me. I for one am not going back to a flawed deal that happened 84 years ago. it was good for that time, yet as I said flawed. why would any of us want that back today? I do not want a revisionist agenda, a bright future that includes us all and not a select few.

thank you, heaven.

[heaven05]

19. K&R also

yep, once people accept racism as a systemic institutional problem, maybe, just maybe we can turn a corner, otherwise the grandchildren will be as old as I am and racism will still be the Raison D'etre for the millions of people who hate AA's.

[sheshe2]

20. And as Blackmon said

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.

It reverberates today.

I hope this ends before the grandchildren reach that age. It may happen, I hope to goddess that it does. We cannot continue like this. It must end.

[byronius]

15. Great post. So important to bring this to light.

Either we're all American or none of us is.

[sheshe2]

21. Correct, byronius!

Fact.

[iluvtennis]

16. thanks for post...going to order the book.

[sheshe2]

18. When reading it...

I had to put it down and walk away a few times, pace, a few deep breaths and return. What we did. Tears.

[VOX]

22. "Slaves without masters." The Civil War only ended legal slavery...

And sadly, with the death of Lincoln, Reconstruction accomplished nothing much in the end, other than breeding greater irrational white resentment and hatred of free African Americans.

The hyper-nationalistic side that shouts "liberty!" the loudest is more than eager to drag this country backwards into darkness, and deny basic rights to anyone who doesn't fit the "white-christian purity" profile.

More than 150 years later, Americans are still ideologically fighting that damned Civil War -- and great is the danger that it could still be be lost.

[sheshe2]

25. Thank you.

[ismnotwasm]

23. K&R

[JCanete]

27. you obviously can't have economic justice without it itself including people of color. Anything that

Last edited Wed Sep 13, 2017, 12:02 AM - Edit history (1)

doesn't do so has hardly even achieved that single milestone.

the New Deal is what should be inspiration for how we go forward regarding the social works programs and the more aggressive tax on those with money to pay for dearly needed things for the commons. We should take from it the huge impact of social security in improving people's lives, the same kind of positive that we can aim for in implementing a single payer system.

This is the honest truth, I have no idea who the people are who are suggesting that we don't touch social issues as we push for economic justice. I do consistently see posts about why we can't promote one economics issue or another, "because Trump", and before that, "because the GOP." Few people are on Sanders jock more than TYT and they do far more coverage of police brutality against people of color than the corporate media does. It's such a sickeningly rampant condition that they nearly have a story daily. Sanders himself didn't mince words about whether or not Black Lives Matter. Nobody I know of wants to brush under the rug the issues of our prison state, which as bad as it is, is far worse and disproportionate in its charging and sentencing of people of color.

But in a society so blatantly unfair, you will have to explain to me how offering free education for all, a minimum wage of 15 dollars an hour, and medicare for all won't all benefit the people most commonly and systemically left out of the American dream. Doing some of these things takes away at least some of the debilitating stress the poverty and or economic instability has on people's health and mental capacity. It will give people back just a little bit so that they can turn that into more activism and civic involvement, to say nothing of more money and access to higher ed, both of which make them a group to be ignored by politicians at their own peril.

Of course economic justice can't account for everything, and it is the social roadblocks that will undeniably stand in the way of economic justice for all people, and we'll have to deal with those roadblocks every step of the way. But good luck getting there by pushing off the economic justice component. It will not happen. Those economic pressures on our dumbed down America will only intensify the power of the scapegoating. Going after the dumbed down public rather than the people who have helped to create that ignorance will only intensify that divide between us.

Connecting with those people by offering them something they dearly need that we ALL dearly need is not pandering or placating. It isn't abandoning a damn thing. It isn't subsuming our goals for social justice just to attract these independent and republican voters. It isn't sacrificing our own voters to try to find something that will get these people to vote in their own damn self-interest. It isn't getting them to vote against the best interests of people of color or immigrants or LGBQT or Muslims, etc. and in fact, the opposite.

AND...we take away their reasons to be afraid of people of color and immigrants, etc.. We give them a different boogie man that is making their lives shit. This goes hand in hand with who continues to spread racist rhetoric at the highest levels and why. Do that and they have far less investment in holding onto their prejudices, and may even start to see them as the arsenic they've been being fed for their whole lives. Hell no, their racism won't magically be gone. Hell yes, there are those who have made their hatred of others too much of their identity to abandon it.

But you can't tackle a person's dogmas and core beliefs if they believe they desperately need to hold onto them for their own safety. If they really believe that it is black people on welfare(yes, ridiculous) and immigrants(ridiculous) who are impacting the quality of their lives, telling them they are racists is pointless. They have wrapped themselves in this bullshit because it gives them a tangible problem, and thus, conceivable solutions to that problem, which are all varying degrees of monstrous.

What is the downside to not abandoning the economic justice angle? That's what I want to know.

[sheshe2]

29. The New Deal was for white people.

the New Deal is what should be inspiration for how we go forward regarding the social works programs and the more aggressive tax on those with money to pay for dearly needed things for the commons. We should take from it the huge impact of social security in improving people's lives, the same kind of positive that we can aim for in implementing a single payer system.

While I agree the rich should pay their fair share it was not aimed at the "commons" it was aimed at poor whites and not all people. Most certainly not for POC or women.

This is the honest truth, I have no idea who the people are who are suggesting that we don't touch social issues as we push for economic justice. I do consistently see posts about why we can't promote one economics issue or another, "because Trump", and before that, "because the GOP." Few people are on Sanders jock more than TYT and they do far more coverage of police brutality against people of color than the corporate media does. It's such a sickeningly rampant condition that they nearly have a story daily. Sanders himself didn't mince words about whether or not Black Lives Matter. Nobody I know of wants to brush under the rug the issues of our prison state, which as bad as it is, is far worse and disproportionate in its charging and sentencing of people of color.

There is a huge difference between just touching on a significant issue (social justice) and PUSHING on another (economic justice). Do you see the difference in your wording? Just touch on one when pushing on the other. Your priorities are clear by your own statement. As for TYT, no thanks. They take a huge amount of money from the GOP. They are not a viable source.g.

Also. why are you making this about Bernie? MY OP had nothing to do with him. Not one thing.

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/the-young-turks-network-raises-4-million-from-former-republican-presidential-candidate/

Connecting with those people by offering them something they dearly need that we ALL dearly need is not pandering or placating. It isn't abandoning a damn thing. It isn't subsuming our goals for social justice just to attract these independent and republican voters. It isn't sacrificing our own voters to try to find something that will get these people to vote in their own damn self-interest. It isn't getting them to vote against the best interests of people of color or immigrants or LGBQT or Muslims, etc. and in fact, the opposite.

Wow. What the white man dearly needs. Yet the black, women, Muslim, lgbt, Jew are pandered to every damn day. They are told they need to wait. Back off...we will get to you later.

I can't answer the rest of your post. It is more of the same.