Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon

Steel-looking for cheap and abundant labor. Government officials leased falsely imprisoned blacks to small-town entrepreneurs, provincial farmers, and dozens of corporations-including U.S. Thousands of other African Americans were simply seized by southern landowners and compelled into years of involuntary servitude. 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. 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. 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.

By turns moving, sobering, and shocking, this unprecedented account reveals the stories of those who fought unsuccessfully against the re-emergence of human labor trafficking, the companies that profited most from neoslavery, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.In this groundbreaking historical exposé, Douglas A. Blackmon 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 shortly thereafter. Using a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Douglas A. In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II Reprint EditionĪ Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the “Age of Neoslavery,” the American period following the Emancipation Proclamation in which convicts, mostly black men, were “leased” through forced labor camps operated by state and federal governments.

Slavery by Another Name by Douglas A. Blackmon