I am pleased that the book came in a reasonable amount of time.

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.

-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!

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.

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 It's as though all the humane slave masters have been replaced by Simon Legrees and Bull Connors.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.

Just started the book,but understand now why progress is so slow.The black americans have had the government standing on their backs since day one.If you have any evidence of African blood you need to know your limitations.

I hope Mr. Blackmon's book sells well. He has documented a piece of history of which too many of us were unaware. I pretty much agree with the other five-star reviews, so I won't echo them in mine.

Born in New York City in 1930 and raised there, as a child I accompanied my parents on annual trips to back country Georgia to visit my father's racist, redneck family. I saw first hand the discrimination and humiliation of the Jim Crow South as well as the abject poverty of the sharecropper system. I remember seeing the stripe-suited chain gangs along the roads and my parents explaining that those men were "jailbirds." However, I was totally ignorant of the conditions of slavery in the mines and of how African-Americans were "convicted" and sold.

I'm probably not qualified to judge the quality of the author's research, but the quantity was certainly impressive. Therefore, I was quite surprised that a reporter for the Wall Street Journal would mistakenly attribute (on page 111) "a more perfect union" to the Declaration of Independence. If Mr. Blackmon reads these reviews, I hope he will accept that small bit of constructive criticism in the spirit in which it was written as I truly appreciate and applaud his important work.

This is a painful but necessary read. It puts meat on the skeletal knowledge we have of the Jim Crow era and illustrates just how nasty the southern half of the US was... explaining a lot about some of the current backwardness there as well.

This is a difficult book to read, not complicated or disorientating, but psychologically unnerving. It points out how this Nation of America has not lived up to the phase "A more perfect union" or Lincoln's Gettysburg address. I don't think I could travel to the south without a sense of disgust. As a companion, I also read about Rhode Island's DeWolf family and between the two, I feel much is being missed in school about the true America.

This book is a remarkable revelation of a truly barbaric form of slavery that existed in America after the Civil War and up to World War II. It well documents the institutionalization of slavery by both local and state governments and the lack of power by the federal government to stop it, and even frequently the lack of will and leadership. The book is fairly light on events from about 1910 to World War II. I highly recommend it to adults but you may need a strong stomach and perhaps some valium as well to make it through the first half, due to the very rough and barbaric nature of how slaves were treated. The second half is easier to take. Young children should not be exposed to this material - let them keep their innocence a little while longer and until they have matured enough to handle it.

I first saw the author on PBS discussing this book and it really peaked my interest. Once I started reading "Slavery by Another Name," I could not put it down. There are so many interesting facts and heart wrenching pictures. Living here in Alabama, surrounded by many of the counties where forced slavery continued, was quite an eye opener. The fact that Black Americans continued to be enslaved and tortured way into the 1950's is a sad saga in American history and something that has never been talked about until now. I found some of the informantion redundant, but overall this is an excellent book.

Slavery By Another Name is a must read for every African American in search of answers about their past. It is a well reaserched book that answers a lot of questions about the seeming inability of African Americans to progress in this wealthy society. It is an important and eye opening work.

It's unbelievable that these conditions existed in America so recently. I was born in 1932, so this was still prevelant during my lifetime. Never had I heard of this misuse and abuse of the black man after slavery...and that it continued so long. My father was born in 1889, and left Texas in 1920; we knew he left "under cover of darkness" as he had "displeased" a white man--but I never knew of the urgency surrounding his leaving until I read this book.

This is slow reading for me. Not that the book isn't gripping and enlightening, but I must take breaks from the realities in the book.

I have purchased three copies--one as an e-reader, one for the "coffee table" and one for a gift. I highly recommend this book.

Not all of american history is pleasant. But it should be made known in order to strengthen our understanding of what contributed to the development of this great nation. Slavery By Another Name opens a part of america's history, though unpleasant,is history nevertheless, and should not remain hidden.

Every american would benifit from the knowledge of this history by reading the above entitled book and gain a greater appreciation of the struggles and suffering endured by some to bring about growth and development of this nation state called americaSlavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

Not all of american history is pleasant. But it should be made known in order to strengthen our understanding of what contributed to the development of this great nation. Slavery By Another Name opens a part of america's history, though unpleasant,is history nevertheless, and should not remain hidden.

Every american would benifit from the knowledge of this history by reading the above entitled book and gain a greater appreciation of the struggles and suffering endured by some to bring about growth and development of this nation state called americaSlavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

Several weeks ago, I listened as Douglas A. Blackmon spoke in an interview on Bill Moyer's Journal (PBS). I sat there in disbelief as he spoke about the research he had done to produce this incredible book: Slavery by Another Name. I say incredible because I have just finished reading a work that has certainly impacted my thinking. Although I live in the South now (if Miami Beach is really the South), I was born in the North and taught high school English there. So my knowledge (well, lack thereof) of slavery is sketchy at best. What bothers me, after having read this work with its depth of research and fine writing, is simply this: why have we allowed ourselves to be so ill-informed about the sins of our fathers? Unfortunately we are still a racist nation. Just look at what the racists are doing to vilify Barack Obama! Thank you, Mr. Blackmon. You have made a very valuable contribution to American history. To bad so few will have given themselves an opportunity to read this book.

Douglas Blackmon has created a classic historical book covering the "dark ages" in American Negro history, namely the period from Reconstruction to the start of World War II. The estimate of the length of this period may vary, but I put it at approximately 75 years, during which Negro slave labor was still actively building fortunes for many companies internationally known as key members of institutional America. This book should be on the coffee table or desk in the home of every African American family in America.

In a society in which history is being cut from budgets in schools across the nation, this book brings to light why history is so important:so that we can learn about these forgotten stories and how they have shaped the nation and the world in which we live.

Blackman does an outstanding job in telling the stories of the slavery that continued after emancipation that most people are not aware of. It is a very touching, dark, and real portrayal of life for African Americans in the Jim-Crow South.

While I would have liked him to further explain when the actual freedom of some of these men actually did occur, and by what means, in further detail, I found the book thoroughly enjoyable.

As a history undergrad, I believe that this book should be required reading in schools to teach Americans the true cruelty of the slavery that continued for so long in America.

As a former grad school history student interested in how Reconstruction and the failure of Radical Reconstruction failed black people and led to years of racial violence and labor oppression (full disclosure: I'm white, born in Britain, lived in the US for nineteen years) this book was very interesting. I can't say the findings he makes are shocking, but the extent of Blackmon's research make the conclusions all the more credible and puts in sharp relief the extent and depth of racism which existed in the South, from the time of the Emancipation Proclamation until World War Two. In addition, his thorough research has documented how black people were, by virtue of the racism which so pervaded Southern life, at the mercy of the most basic local laws.

That this book could be written is an indictment of the pervasiveness of racism. Although there are instances of decent white people attempting to stem the tide of racism which seemed to dominate every aspect of southern life, by and large, the efforts were completely inadequate to address such a pervasive, all-encompassing set of beliefs.

Blackmon has assembled a detailed, damning, catalog of crimes committed from the time of the end of Reconstruction through the beginning of the Second World War. The particular area he examines is the ability of large mining and industrial concerns in the South to bundle large numbers of black men into debt peonage in the South, almost without exception, simply on account of their violation of flimsy vagrancy laws created to penalize black men after the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. The legal powers of clerks of the court and sheriffs, in addition to the poisonous, universal racism of the South, ensured that the arrest and conviction process was almost without exception, a foregone conclusion.

The sources that Blackmon has found and applied are not controversial. They are county records, municipal records, census documents, and business records, some prior academic historical works, and the rare primary account of some of these crimes. By these documents, he has re-created, in multiple instances, legal process by which black men were held in virtual slavery. That in itself is the most damning indictment. Whites were so widely invested in this legal framework that the meager efforts to bring it down were damned by the burden of heavy layers of southern resentment toward perceived interlopers, by Southern belief that Yankees had no business regulating what southern whites claimed to believe was a unique relationship among black and white folks, and by, even more essentially, the economic benefits accrued by the system of debt peonage which the subjugation of black people facilitated.


There were occasional efforts to address the debt peonage which had been re-established in the South. A New York paper's expose of the conditions at one business prompted a federal investigation in 1903 which ultimately led to the trial of several men who had engaged in debt peonage. Only one conviction, however, was secured. The judge in the case, a Judge Jones, seemed a very decent man. However, ultimately, it is clear that he could not bring himself to confront the full breadth of the system of debt peonage, once he realized the extent of the system. He would not criminalize the myriad ways in which the tentacles of debt peonage facilitated the great wealth which was accumulating in the South. The judge was lobbied and threatened by many who felt their way of life and their legal standing was under threat if a thorough examination of the workings of the labor system in the South was undertaken.

Blackmon does not set out to offer justifications or suggest that there is some broader concern which we, as modern readers cannot see. It seems clear that this business system disgusts Blackmon to his core. That said, he does not blink, thankfully, from reporting the darkest secrets of the economic system in the South during the late 1800s and early 1900s. It is truly painful, painful reading for nearly anyone who believes in the best ideals of the United States. But we must confront this dreadful history if we are to realize the idealistic ideals which our Founders claimed to aim for.

Blackmon's book, as mentioned, is painstakingly researched. He spared no expense and left no stone unturned in order to tell this story. He does not need to make giant leaps of faith or extrapolations to reach conclusions which can be debated by critics, talking heads, and the like. The book is so well-documented that most claims are supported by the primary documents. If you want to learn something about the system of forced labor and debt peonage in the South, or believe that with the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, that the history of America for black people entered a completely different chapter. This book will surely be a touchstone for historians interested in race relations and labor history in the South during the post-bellum period and for laypeople (it is, tonally and in terms of language, easily accessible) for a long, long time. This book is just that good, just that important, and just that powerful.

This summer I was determined not to read a book on slavery or the black experience, and to devote more time to reading fiction. However, after seeing Mr. Blackmon on the Travis Smiley Show, I changed my mind. This book was captivating and heart-wrenching. It was well researched, and poignantly written. The stories were painful to read, as I frequently found myself imagining the pain that my people endured. I was equally moved by the lawyers and judges who were determined to dismantle this inhumane institution. As a professor who teaches African American music, work songs, blues, and spirituals have a deeper meaning. They clearly reflect our experiences as a people. Blue singer and composer Willie Dixon was sent to a prison farm, and heard all forms of African American music. His experience is documented in "I am the Blues." He says that blues had a deeper meaning to him after his imprisonment. I will never teach African American music the same after the reading "Slavery by Another Name." Finally, Senator Obama's nomination has more historical significance given the measures that whites took to limit black participation in politics. We have come a long as a people and as a nation.

If you are really interested in what happened to Black Americans post slavery to early WWII, this book is a must read. This book exposes alot of hidden facts that our "wonderful" education system does not teach you in history courses. Slavery did not end with the Civil War, but that is what certain groups want you to believe. The truth hurts.

I must say I truly enjoyed a fresh look at Slavery by Another Name. I shared this book and some if it's passage's with family and friends, and they were surprised at what they learned about yet another part of history for Afro-Americans. I would ask every American to read this book, especially those who don't know any or all of their history.

I have always maintained that the enslavement of millions of Blacks by the white man during almost 400 years has been the most horrible Holocaust ever perpetrated by mankind.Here comes Douglas Blackmon and -in a most shocking,stunning and powerful book-justifies my view.He also justifies the dictum of Edward Gibbon who wrote that history is no more than a list of human crimes.
The re-enslavement of Blacks after its formal abolition is -I am sure-one of the most horrendous crimes of the 20th century and is certainly one of the most shameful episodes of American history.In the name of the false God of Mammon,whites have committed the worst possible acts against their country fellowmen.The book shows that the Declaration of the Emancipation of the Blacks was a farce.By documenting and examining thousand of cases, Mr. Blackmon has written a masterpiece, showing the extent of racial subjugation by all possible means.Many Southern American companies have profitted immensely from the phenomenon of neoslavery and I think it would be best for them to acknowledge this fact by compensating the families of those unfortunate victims in the same manner the Jewish people have managed to convince the Germans to do so. Although the Nazis have singled out the Jews for extermination because their only crime was being Jewish, the Jewish Holocaust was limited in time.Not so with the Black Americans.
Cheap labour was the name of the game and Blacks were tortured, maimed,raped, abused,mishandled,lynched, exploited-all these for the purpose of enriching the pockets of their white masters, who enjoyed loopholes in the legal system for their own interests.The enslavement of Blacks was a continuous Holocaust by means of slave labour.
This book should find its place in every American household and should be made mandatory reading in every school or university.Mr. Blackmon has set a new standard of historical research ,illuminating one of the most shameful and revulsive (little-unknown) chapters of American history and for his achievement he should get the Pulitzer prize, and this book should be nominated as "The Book of the Year".

This book is exceptionally well written and a worthy topic. It should be read by all American history students. At this point the history is mostly known by those directly impacted and those that loved them. As a result of our ignorance about our Nation's history, links between our diverse people are compromised. Until we know the stories of our people, we will shake our heads -- some thinking why are they upset and others thinking how can they be so ignorant.

This history is a superbly done book on a dark period of American History that has been ignored far too long. It covers in horrifying detail the system of mostly black convict labor that provided the manpower for the south's 19th century industry, and resulted in the subjugation of blacks after the civil war until the 1950's. It's a must read book on a very dark period of American history

I Just finished Slavery by Another Name. I had known about the black code for several years, but not the selling of free black people. I hate the Al Sharptons of the world or black people that defend criminals that blame their crime on racism. They disrespect all these ghosts of the past that suffered at the hands of brutal savage souls.

But one thing has changed for me: Although I never called anyone in my life a nigger, I thought it. After reading your book, I will never allow that thought to come to the surface again.

That photo of the man tied up on the ground felt his short life of suffering would have no meaning, but he was wrong, after 100 years we look at him and feel his pain and are influenced by his image forever. I wish I could embrace him and give him the love and respect every creature deserves.

I found this book to be very interesting but lacking in that there was no context provided for the problem. The author contends that in the period after the Civil War blacks were Re-Enslaved. He does a commendable job of showing how the black community was systematically stripped of its rights and abandoned by the government after the Civil War. He also does an exemplary job showing how abuses in the criminal justice system of the south allowed for blacks to be sentenced to virtual slavery.

Where the book fails though is in showing that this was an re-enslavement of civil war blacks. It ignores the wholesale black migration of blacks to the north in the years before and during WWI which would contradict the statements that blacks could be arrested for any crime an officer saw fit. The author ignores whites sentenced to similar terms in jail and conditions which was wide spread in the south. Worst of all, the book lacks any context. We are lead to believe that because it happened in these places, it happened everywhere.

A good book, just not a great one!

This book is both profoundly factual, and at times, partially "un-factual," -- that is, reconstructed history. In instances where the ex-slaves could not speak for themselves, which were many, Mr. Blackmon deigns to speak for them himself. It is what can only be called "necessary historical extrapolation, in defense of the defenseless." Yet, somehow these noble stretches beyond the data do indeed conform to and confirm the same stories and results researched equally well by William B. Taylor in his "Down on Parchman Farm: The Great Prison in the Mississippi Delta," which covers the same period as this book does, but primarily from the Mississippi point of view rather than from Alabama's.

Altogether Blackmon taps into another important, under-reported yet very dark part of American history: The period of the Southern White "Redemption," after the freedman's Bureau had closed its tents down (literally) and moved back North, leaving the ex-slaves to fend for themselves for the next 100 years.

The most cold-blooded of the truths that he reveals is that the shaky white farms and plantations that managed to revive themselves in the aftermath of the Civil War, simply could not make it without black expertise. And here he does not mean just black manual labor, but more importantly, black farming and household management skills. As a result, of this white deficiency, and as is usual for the U.S. when it comes to race relations, the Southerners sought to re-enslave and re-colonize blacks by more novel and more interesting but equally brutal means: that is by legal and social fiat.

In almost every instance, these tactics had a patina of legalisms pasted over them (and the author spends too much examining them and churning them trying it seems to treat them as if they were legitimate defenses of all but indefensible practices) the overall effect was the same: that "Blacks had no legal protections whatsoever." Going through the legal motions was only a pretext for whites to continue doing what they had done during slavery and had planned to continue doing by any means necessary anyway, in order to continue "keeping blacks down" and re-enslaved.

While the book makes it seem that these tactic and stratagems for re-enslavement occurred only due to Southern industrial and domestic exigencies, hatred and mean-spirited chicanery, the author must be reminded that the brutal "Black Code Laws" upon which many of these pernicious Southern practices were patterned, began in the North before the Civil War, and were simply grafted on to the "redeemed southern way of life" as the new "Jim Crow" laws and practices.

I would have been much happier if the author had made an attempt to show the "all but linear (and very stable) connection" across time between the arrest and incarceration rates then -- which in Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and Florida, constantly hovered around 25% -- and the almost exact NATIONAL rates today. This in my view (as well as that of a handful of sociologists) could not be only a mere coincident, but more likely due to deep structure social reasons and causes that did indeed grow out of America's culture of "structural racism," which inevitably, one way or another, gets mapped back to slavery.

The reasons for incarcerations then and now, are, of course different: Then, as the author so carefully elaborates, blacks were picked up and thrown in jail on almost any pretext whatsoever - from vagrancy to stealing a can of beans. Then, it was a conscious case of "coerced labor," pure and simple. Today it is due mostly to the Draconian and unfair 100 to 1 cocaine laws, and a host of other, mostly unconscious "race related social causes." The utter stability of these percentages in themselves, represents an untold story laying dormant in the subtext of American culture, all to itself.

Any excavation of American history this good, even with some limitations, cannot get less than five stars.

Excellent update to history that is rarely known. Should be in every school and public library.

Slavery By Another Name is painful to read. It is cleanly written, for the most part, but the continuation of virtual slavery in the US South that only began to recede with the advent of WW2 makes it grim slogging. But slog away, dear reader, because you need to know what is in this book, which , in my opinion, deserves and will receive a number of literary and historical awards this year.

Great Book. Will there be a book following this one entitled The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the 1980's to this present day under the War On Drugs?

This is a book that stays with me. There were so many things I didn't know: How the Emancipation Proclamation didn't really end slavery, the cruelty that continued. How could a coal mine be operated with 150 "slaves"? It had no toilets and only 3 half-buckets of water a day for all the men to wash the coal dust off. How the states profited by leasing or selling their prisoners to companies needing workers. It just went on and on. This is a page in our history we need to know and be ashamed of.

Douglas Blackmon writes an incredibly detailed account of the sad history of African Americans forcibly enslaved through questionable legal means long after the Civil War several southern States up through WWII. Using trumped up charges or minor charges with extreme penalties requiring extended jail or prison terms, blacks were incarcerated and their terms leased out to mines, farms, logging companies and a variety of industries. Due to the financial rewards gained by arresting Sheriffs, Judges and Justices of the Peace, blacks were rounded up many times on false charges to merely increase the earning of those involved. The saddest history is the extreme treatment given to prisoners leased out or whose fines were paid by the owners of industry or property who maintained the prisoners until there "time" was complete although often extended. Working in horrible conditions, long days, 6 days a week, poorly fed, poorly housed and often severely beaten; blacks died by the score and were buried in unmarked graves. Efforts to break this form of peonage was attempted in Alabama by weakly supported U.S. Attorney Reese in 1903 who actually obtained convictions yet suffered defeat with light sentences and shockingly a pardon later by President "TR" Roosevelt. Although Roosevelt made attempts at Civil Rights, he seemed bridled by States rights over Federal and apparently political considerations. The period was particularly violent toward blacks as noted my numerous lynchings and murders of black men not just in the Deep South but also not far from Springfield, Illinois. It is also quite startling that even companies such as U.S. Steel, that expanded into the south, allowed companies they purchase to continue this form of slave labor. What is particularly abhorrent was the gross mistreatment of prisoners and killings of helpless prisoners indicative of the fact that these men, and enslaved women, were considered less than slaves, as if they had no value primarily because they could be easily replaced by an abundant supply of arrested individuals at virtually no cost. An eye opener of book with to the uninformed is very surprising, for example, President Wilson was broad minded in reference to the League of Nations but very close minded concerning race relations and Civil Rights invoking segregation of govt. employees and facilities. Remarkably, the author starts his story by telling about a young black man by the name of Green Cottenham who was an obvious free man long after the Civil War but was arrested for a fictitious charge and suddenly imprisoned. The author then follows the history of various counties, particularly in Alabama where peonage thrived, and he writes in detail about thousands of men and women imprisoned where he incorporates hundreds of factual stories of individuals abused, tortured and killed. He comes full circle to present time to talk to surviving family, particularly Green Cottenham's, about this horribly past. It is a very ugly history, but one that should be told because no matter how repugnant, it happened. There was no final act after the Civil War since there was no long term plan to asimilate or protect African Americans in a hostile environment. A workable long term plan was needed for both races that most likely required an economic stimulus in the post war south and a process for African Americans to make a living. The book also contains astonishing pictures from the period, one in particular showing a young man being punished by being tied to a pick axe, run below his knees with his hands tied to his ankles. One act of decency for that period would be for the States to buy and maintain the cemeteries containing the unmarked graves of the abused individuals and maintain them for eternity.

Douglas Blackmon writes an incredibly detailed account of the sad history of African Americans forcibly enslaved through questionable legal means long after the Civil War several southern States up through WWII. Using trumped up charges or minor charges with extreme penalties requiring extended jail or prison terms, blacks were incarcerated and their terms leased out to mines, farms, logging companies and a variety of industries. Due to the financial rewards gained by arresting Sheriffs, Judges and Justices of the Peace, blacks were rounded up many times on false charges to merely increase the earning of those involved. The saddest history is the extreme treatment given to prisoners leased out or whose fines were paid by the owners of industry or property who maintained the prisoners until there "time" was complete although often extended. Working in horrible conditions, long days, 6 days a week, poorly fed, poorly housed and often severely beaten; blacks died by the score and were buried in unmarked graves. Efforts to break this form of peonage was attempted in Alabama by weakly supported U.S. Attorney Reese in 1903 who actually obtained convictions yet suffered defeat with light sentences and shockingly a pardon later by President "TR" Roosevelt. Although Roosevelt made attempts at Civil Rights, he seemed bridled by States rights over Federal and apparently political considerations. The period was particularly violent toward blacks as noted my numerous lynchings and murders of black men not just in the Deep South but also not far from Springfield, Illinois. It is also quite startling that even companies such as U.S. Steel, that expanded into the south, allowed companies they purchase to continue this form of slave labor. What is particularly abhorrent was the gross mistreatment of prisoners and killings of helpless prisoners indicative of the fact that these men, and enslaved women, were considered less than slaves, as if they had no value primarily because they could be easily replaced by an abundant supply of arrested individuals at virtually no cost. An eye opener of book demonstrates that President Wilson was broad minded in reference to the League of Nations but very close minded concerning race relations and Civil Rights invoking segregation of govt. employees and facilities. Remarkably, the author starts his story by telling about a young black man by the name of Green Cottenham who was an obvious free man long after the Civil War but was arrested for a fictitious charge and suddenly imprisoned. The author then follows the history of various counties, particularly in Alabama where peonage thrived, and he writes in detail about thousands of men and women imprisoned where he incorporates hundreds of factual stories of individuals abused, tortured and killed. He comes full circle to present time to talk to surviving family, particularly Green Cottenham's, about this horribly past. It is a very ugly history, but one that should be told because no matter how repugnant, it happened. There was no final act after the Civil War since there was no long term plan to asimilate or protect African Americans in a hostile environment. A workable long term plan was needed for both races that most likely required an economic stimulus in the post war south and a process for African Americans to make a living. The book also contains astonishing pictures from the period, one in particular showing a young man being punished by being tied to a pick axe, run below his knees with his hands tied to his ankles. One act of decency for that period would be for the States to buy and maintain the cemeteries containing the unmarked graves of the abused individuals and maintain them for eternity.

Douglas Blackmon writes an incredibly detailed account of the sad history of African Americans forcibly enslaved through questionable legal means long after the Civil War several southern States up through WWII. Using trumped up charges or minor charges with extreme penalties requiring extended jail or prison terms, blacks were incarcerated and their terms leased out to mines, farms, logging companies and a variety of industries. Due to the financial rewards gained by arresting Sheriffs, Judges and Justices of the Peace, blacks were rounded up many times on false charges to merely increase the earning of those involved. The saddest history is the extreme treatment given to prisoners leased out or whose fines were paid by the owners of industry or property who maintained the prisoners until there "time" was complete although often extended. Working in horrible conditions, long days, 6 days a week, poorly fed, poorly housed and often severely beaten; blacks died by the score and were buried in unmarked graves. Efforts to break this form of peonage was attempted in Alabama by weakly supported U.S. Attorney Reese in 1903 who actually obtained convictions yet suffered defeat with light sentences and shockingly a pardon later by President "TR" Roosevelt. Although Roosevelt made attempts at Civil Rights, he seemed bridled by States rights over Federal and apparently political considerations. The period was particularly violent toward blacks as noted my numerous lynchings and murders of black men not just in the Deep South but also not far from Springfield, Illinois. It is also quite startling that even companies such as U.S. Steel, that expanded into the south, allowed companies they purchase to continue this form of slave labor. What is particularly abhorrent was the gross mistreatment of prisoners and killings of helpless prisoners indicative of the fact that these men, and enslaved women, were considered less than slaves, as if they had no value primarily because they could be easily replaced by an abundant supply of arrested individuals at virtually no cost. An eye opener of book demonstrates that President Wilson was broad minded in reference to the League of Nations but very close minded concerning race relations and Civil Rights invoking segregation of govt. employees and facilities. Remarkably, the author starts his story by telling about a young black man by the name of Green Cottenham who was an obvious free man long after the Civil War but was arrested for a fictitious charge and suddenly imprisoned. The author then follows the history of various counties, particularly in Alabama where peonage thrived, and he writes in detail about thousands of men and women imprisoned where he incorporates hundreds of factual stories of individuals abused, tortured and killed. He comes full circle to present time to talk to surviving family, particularly Green Cottenham's, about this horribly past. It is a very ugly history, but one that should be told because no matter how repugnant, it happened. The book also contains astonishing pictures from the period, one in particular showing a young man being punished by being tied to a pick axe, run below his knees with his hands tied to his ankles. One act of decency for that period would be for the States to buy and maintain the cemeteries containing the unmarked graves of the abused individuals and maintain them for eternity.

Sub-titled, "The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II," the volume deals with a little remembered period in the southern US that followed emancipation and continued into the first decades of the Jim Crow era during which "separate but equal" led inevitably to "colored" water fountains, back of the bus riding, serving African Americans out of the back of restaurants, turning a blind eye to crimes against African Americans, etc. Having lived in the south my entire life this book was intriguing on its face, but I had no idea just how ignorant I was about the history of the places of my raising. The essence of the book is that slavery in the US did not end in the 1860's as we have believed, but in the mid 1940's. The argument is bulletproof. Slavery did not disappear; it simply changed names.

Immediately following Lincoln's Proclamation that granted freedom to all slaves in the US there was confusion in the South. Was it really freedom? Where would these millions of freed slaves live and work? Could they really vote? What would happen to the land belonging to whites? Would there be an occupying army from the North for months or years? How would the economy, which had become substantial in steel and cotton production, be rebuilt without slaves? It would not take long for these questions to be answered in the most horrifying way-a way that would make some antebellum plantations and the sipping of mint juleps while black hands deftly cleared cotton bolls under the threat of the lash pale by comparison. Blackmon writes, "By 1900, the South's judicial system had been wholly reconfigured to make one of its primary purposes the coercion of African Americans to comply with the social customs and labor demands of whites."

The core essential to the re-enslavement was the "convict lease" program entered into by many corporations and plantation owners. In order to provide cheap labor for the burgeoning mining industry, lumber yards, mills, and turpentine production, businesses as large as U. S. Steel (via its subsidiary Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co.) would "lease" convicts for labor-convicts that could not pay off the fines and debts charged to them in court. The problem was that the legal system that grew from this arrangement had a single purpose: the arrest and conviction of African American men who had no means of paying the fines and fees assigned to them so that they could be "leased" to a corporate entity for a period of time (say, 100 days) after which time they would supposedly be freed.

Across the "Black Belt" of the old South, small town governments gave wide latitude to local sheriffs, constables and justices of the peace to arrest, on the flimsiest of evidence, convict, sentence and lease prisoners. The laws that were passed and enforced were, primarily, those of which African-Americans would be found "guilty": vagrancy (vaguely defined as not being able to prove at a given moment that one has a job), making a pass at a white woman, leaving employment without permission from the employer (creating permanent servitude). At sentencing a "friend" or corporation would pay the fine and associated fees thereby taking possession of the prisoner until the debt was paid or lease the prisoner from the controlling government. The "convict" would then be taken to a place such as the Pratt Mines in Birmingham, the Chattahoochee Brick Company in Atlanta or one of any number of plantations or forests across the south. Once in the system, any person could be sub-leased any number of times making it almost impossible for concerned family members to ever find them. Powerful Atlanta families as well known and honored in memory as the Woodruffs and the Hurts were involved in this chicanery to various degrees.

Additionally, once leased, any infraction could add days, weeks, months or years to a sentence that might have been as short as 30 days. Broken tools, stolen food, lack of productivity and others infractions real and imagined could and did accumulate at the time of impending freedom for many, if they were blessed enough to live that long. Because of the endless supply of African Americans to be arrested, there was little to no incentive for the corporations or landowners to take care of those they had leased. In the slavery era, each slave represented a capital investment from which the slave owner expected a return. To kill a slave was akin to throwing money in the wind. The convict lease program removed all need for such "compassion." At the Slope No. 12 mine outside Birmingham, AL, men were daily loosed from their barrack shackles at 3:00 AM, taken into a labyrinth of tunnels underground, worked all day in excrement fouled waters, brought back above ground after nightfall only seeing the sun on Sunday. That, of course, was the Lord's Day and the white folks did not work.

Murder, contagion, rape and intentional sickness from drinking the defiled tunnel water were common. Those who died were dumped unceremoniously into unmarked graves at the edges of the massive compound. The call would then go out for more workers. Which meant more trumped up charges. More arrests. More money changing hands. In a single year, 25% of the income for the State of Alabama came from the convict lease program.

With the exception of an extended investigation under President Teddy Roosevelt and a tenacious, heroic effort by an Assistant U. S. Attorney named Warren Reese, virtually nothing was done to stop, as the author phrased it during our discussion, this "malevolent exclusion of justice." In the aftermath of the Civil War and the still tenuous relationship between North and South, the investigations ended in minor penalties on some very guilty men with most sentences being suspended. Had he been supported with a little backbone from those in Washington, DC, Reese may well have gone down in history as the William Wilberforce of his generation. But it was not to be.

Anyone raised in the south should read this book. Anyone interested in racial understanding or reconciliation issues should read this book. IMO, it will set a standard for understanding this period of American history. It is a deep and profound work.

If nothing else, Mr. Blackmon should be seriously considered for a Pulitzer Prize with his publication of "Slavery by Another Name." He has not only written a MUST read book for all Americans, but he has seriously altered the way we must look at American history. Mr. Blackmon's work cuts through that old hiding place for so many Americans: "Slavery was a loooooong time ago, so I couldn't have had anything to do with it." Blackmon's book puts modern day slavery well within the lifetimes of a great many living Americans and holds us all responsible for its existence in one way or another. There were those who participated and benefitted directly, and there were those who benefitted by never objecting though they knew it was going on, and there is just the general public who all benefitted from the underpaid labors of slaves, not prior to the Civil War, but in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For those who do not understand the anger of black Americans feel for white Americans, they need only to step into the pages of this incredible book and the reason for that anger will become instantly clear. Actually what would not make sense would be for black Americans to not be angry - that would indicate that they were crazy. Blackmon's book represents a prodigious amount of research, the careful, precise, deep kind of research that is hard to refute; he has uncovered facts about a situation that cannot be denied. Blackmon's book should not only be required reading in every American history course, it should be a text book in most. I worry about Mr. Blackmon personally as I wonder how he could roam around in this kind of material without himself becoming deeply depressed. Albeit he is an experienced journalist probably able to shake off the horrors of any situation he writes about, but still, this is no ordinary situation, with no ordinary facts. This is a story that no doubt has changed Mr. Blackmon himself, and I daresay that it will change everyone who reads it. And I suggest that every person even mildly interested in altering the course of this country put Mr. Blackmon's book on their MUST read list, and as they do they should keep in mind the words of George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

In 1932 two movies came out of Hollywood:
Paul Muni in "I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang"
and
Richard Barthelmess (also Bette Davis as a blond): "Cabin in the Cotton".

After the Production Code, fomented by the Catholic Church, gained bite even these stories --- less than half-truths though they were -- disappeared as Hollywood followed the revisionist money-making pseudo-history of D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" with "Jezebel" and "Gone with the Wind" (to name only the best known) --- plangant melodramas of the "cavalier culture" of the "Old South."

It has been that revisionist history that has indoctrinated millions of Americans and millions of others throughout the world.

Now, to paraphrase Ms. Davis in "Jezebel": "It's 2008, pumkin! 2008!!" and Douglas Blackmon, the Wall Street Journal's Alanta Bureau Chief (who would have supposed? -- well, their news reporting has always far outshined their editorial page, Mr. Murdoch) at last pulls back the veil.

Read it and, if you have one ounce of humanity, you will weep, perhaps literally.

You will realize that those old "critical" films ("I Am a Fugitive" and Muni were nominated for Academy Awards -- they both lost; Ms. Davis won for "Jezebel" and you know about "Gone with...") actually hid the most bitter truth of the situation. You may also understand why many African Americans are bitter and angry.

This book, although not written by a professional historian, is well researched, thoroughly documented (to the extent documentation was not destroyed or buried, like the graves of the "leased" laborers), and engagingly written. Most important, Mr. Blackmon does not stop with a mere description of the brutal system of "convict" leasing which permeated Southern industry until World War II. He relates it to the entire system of repression, oppression, and degredation of African Americans - Jim Crow, lynching (averging one every ten days from 1880 to 1940), and corruption - and the legal, political, and public denial of the same - which permeated U.S. culture at the time -- and continues to this day.

If you are like me, you will not be able to read this book in one sitting. It is too gut-wrenching --- whether you are white or black.

Nevertheless, it will be one of the most important books you will ever read. Unfortunately, it will probably not sell as many copies as "Gone with the Wind" nor is it likely that even "Indy" moviemakers will put the story of Green Cottinham on film. More's the pity.

"The Wall Street Journal" has been running adaptations of this powerful, well researched history written by its Atlanta Bureau Chief, Douglas A. Blackmon. The first extract chronicles how companies owned by these two men used forced labor to help rebuild Atlanta -- a practice that was widespread through the South.

"Between the Emancipation Proclamation and the beginning of World War II, millions of African-Americans were compelled into or lived under the shadow of the South's new forms of coerced labor. Under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands were arbitrarily detained, hit with high fines and charged with the costs of their arrests. With no means to pay such debts, prisoners were sold into coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroad construction crews and plantations. Others were simply seized by southern landowners and pressed into years of involuntary servitude. At the turn of the 20th century, at least 3,464 African-American men and 130 women lived in forced labor camps in Georgia, according to a 1905 report by the federal Commissioner of Labor."

In 1908 a commission held weeks of hearings into the state's system of leasing prisoners to private contractors. "Witness after witness -- ranging from former guards to legislators to freed slaves -- gave vivid accounts of the system's brutalities. Wraithlike men infected with tuberculosis were left to die on the floor of a storage shed at a farm near Milledgeville. Laborers who attempted escape from the Muscogee Brick Co. were welded into ankle shackles with three-inch-long spikes turned inward -- to make it impossibly painful to run again. Guards everywhere were routinely drunk and physically abusive." Many witnesses testified in particular about practices at Chattahoochee Brick owned by a very wealthy and prominent citizen of Atlanta.

A special session of the state Legislature authorized a public referendum on the fate of the system. Georgia's nearly all-white electorate voted by a 2-to-1 margin to abolish the system in March 1909. Without prison labor, business collapsed at many businesses, including Chattahoochee Brick. Production fell by nearly 50% in the next year. Total profit dwindled to less than $13,000.

A second extract describes the effect of World War II on the system. States no longer leased convicts; "now, the practice was mainly carried out through informal arrangements with city and county courts. Abusive sharecropping arrangements and the peonage system -- which allowed farmers to use bogus debts and the threat of violence to keep workers on their land indefinitely -- hung over millions of African-Americans."

Roosevelt worried that the mistreatment of blacks would be used in propaganda by Japan and Germany to undercut support for the war by African-Americans. Attorney General Francis Biddle shared the president's concerns with his top assistants. "Mr. Biddle was informed that federal policy had long been to cede virtually all allegations of slavery to local jurisdiction -- effectively guaranteeing they would never be prosecuted. Mr. Biddle, who hailed from an elite Northern family in Philadelphia, was shocked."

On December 12, 1941, Mr. Biddle issued Circular No. 3591 to all federal prosecutors acknowledging the history of unwritten federal policy to ignore most reports of involuntary servitude. "It is the purpose of these instructions to direct the attention of the United States Attorneys to the possibilities of successful prosecutions stemming from alleged peonage complaints which have heretofore been considered inadequate to invoke federal prosecution." Blackmon traces the course of the prosecutions, many of them successful, some over the course of the war. He also describes the resistance of many prosecutors, as well as J. Edgar Hoover, to the new policy.

Blackmon writes that he has examined court records over a number of years that document the agreements between sheriffs and other officials describing these practices. He also discusses The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901-1969 by Peters Daniels which was based on Justice Department files describing the unlawful system of peonage. Sharecroppers, in particular, would be advanced money to grow a crop, and income from the crop would be divided. Daniels showed that millions remained in debt for years; somehow the tenants's shares were never enough to pay off the debts.

Blackmon makes a compelling case that leasing prisoners and unlawful peonage (as well as poll taxes and voter intimidation) were part of a very complicated system "that was designed to intimidate the millions of black people living in the South right up until the verge of World War II."

Blackmon's most powerful passages deal with real people caught up in the system. He argued during an interview on NPR that slaves before the Civil War had great value to their owners; there was a strong economic incentive to at least ensure that slaves survived. Under the "neo-slavery practices" after the Civil War, "what emerged was a kind of brutally efficient, economic rationale which viewed these workers more as equipment than as humans. The cost of acquiring them was so small that it was much more economic for these companies and landowners to work them as hard as possible even if that meant working them to death because they were easily and inexpensively replaced."

This book is very hard to read. I believe it is essential to do so to truly understand American history.

"The Wall Street Journal" has been running adaptations of this powerful, well researched history written by its Atlanta Bureau Chief, Douglas A. Blackmon. The first extract chronicles how companies owned by these two men used forced labor to help rebuild Atlanta -- a practice that was widespread through the South.

"Between the Emancipation Proclamation and the beginning of World War II, millions of African-Americans were compelled into or lived under the shadow of the South's new forms of coerced labor. Under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands were arbitrarily detained, hit with high fines and charged with the costs of their arrests. With no means to pay such debts, prisoners were sold into coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroad construction crews and plantations. Others were simply seized by southern landowners and pressed into years of involuntary servitude. At the turn of the 20th century, at least 3,464 African-American men and 130 women lived in forced labor camps in Georgia, according to a 1905 report by the federal Commissioner of Labor."

In 1908 a commission held weeks of hearings into the state's system of leasing prisoners to private contractors. "Witness after witness -- ranging from former guards to legislators to freed slaves -- gave vivid accounts of the system's brutalities. Wraithlike men infected with tuberculosis were left to die on the floor of a storage shed at a farm near Milledgeville. Laborers who attempted escape from the Muscogee Brick Co. were welded into ankle shackles with three-inch-long spikes turned inward -- to make it impossibly painful to run again. Guards everywhere were routinely drunk and physically abusive." Many witnesses testified in particular about practices at Chattahoochee Brick owned by a very wealthy and prominent citizen of Atlanta.

A special session of the state Legislature authorized a public referendum on the fate of the system. Georgia's nearly all-white electorate voted by a 2-to-1 margin to abolish the system in March 1909. Without prison labor, business collapsed at many businesses, including Chattahoochee Brick. Production fell by nearly 50% in the next year. Total profit dwindled to less than $13,000.

A second extract describes the effect of World War II on the system. States no longer leased convicts; "now, the practice was mainly carried out through informal arrangements with city and county courts. Abusive sharecropping arrangements and the peonage system -- which allowed farmers to use bogus debts and the threat of violence to keep workers on their land indefinitely -- hung over millions of African-Americans."

Roosevelt worried that the mistreatment of blacks would be used in propaganda by Japan and Germany to undercut support for the war by African-Americans. Attorney General Francis Biddle shared the president's concerns with his top assistants. "Mr. Biddle was informed that federal policy had long been to cede virtually all allegations of slavery to local jurisdiction -- effectively guaranteeing they would never be prosecuted. Mr. Biddle, who hailed from an elite Northern family in Philadelphia, was shocked."

On December 12, 1941, Mr. Biddle issued Circular No. 3591 to all federal prosecutors acknowledging the history of unwritten federal policy to ignore most reports of involuntary servitude. "It is the purpose of these instructions to direct the attention of the United States Attorneys to the possibilities of successful prosecutions stemming from alleged peonage complaints which have heretofore been considered inadequate to invoke federal prosecution." Blackmon traces the course of the prosecutions, many of them successful, some over the course of the war. He also describes the resistance of many prosecutors, as well as J. Edgar Hoover, to the new policy.

Blackmon writes that he has examined court records over a number of years that document the agreements between sheriffs and other officials describing these practices. He also discusses The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901-1969 by Peters Daniels which was based Justice Department files describing the unlawful system of peonage. Sharecroppers, in particular, would be advanced money to grow a crop, and income from the crop would be divided. Daniels showed that millions remained in debt for years.

Blackmon makes a compelling case that leasing prisoners and unlawful peonage (as well as poll taxes and voter intimidation) were part of a very complicated system "that was designed to intimidate the millions of black people living in the South right up until the verge of World War II."

Blackmon's most powerful passages deal with real people caught up in the system. He argued during an interview on NPR that slaves before the Civil War had great value to their owners; there was a strong economic incentive to at least ensure that slaves survived. Under the "neo-slavery practices" after the Civil War, "what emerged was a kind of brutally efficient, economic rationale which viewed these workers more as equipment than as humans. The cost of acquiring them was so small that it was much more economic for these companies and landowners to work them as hard as possible even if that meant working them to death because they were easily and inexpensively replaced."

This book is very hard to read. I believe it is essential to do so to truly understand American history.