Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
An investigative history that exposes the forced labor and racial domination that continued after emancipation.
Work Information
It rewrites the period after emancipation by following records and testimony.
Using archival records and personal histories, the book shows how Black Americans were bound again from the post-Civil War era into World War II. It is a major work that reexamines the legal and labor systems of the nation.
Review Summaries
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Readers see it as a book that reveals the continuity of oppressive systems and revises how U.S. history is understood.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Doubleday
- Published
- 2008-03-25
- Pages
- 480 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 16.38 x 4.06 x 24.13 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780385506250
- ISBN-10
- 0385506252
- Category
- 洋書/History/Americas/United States/20th Century
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.
DOUGLAS A. BLACKMON is the Atlanta Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal . He has written extensively on race, the economy, and American society. Reared in the Mississippi Delta, he lives in downtown Atlanta with his wife and children.
Reviews
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日本人が奴隷だったことがあったかどうか
なかなかアメリカ国内でも正面から論じる話題ではないと思うが、つい近年まであった黒人奴隷制度について詳述した本。表紙はジョージア州で懲罰のため縛られ放置された奴隷の1932年の出版物の写真らしいが、このような労働キャンプに近い環境に、日系アメリカ人だって第二次世界大戦中は入れられていたんだし、つい1980年代まではウォールストリートには黒人のマネージャーは居なかったという事実だって、若い日本人のほとんどは知らないんじゃないかと思う。つい最近も米国南部の大学では、大学卒業パーティが白人と黒人で分かれているのが社会問題になっていた。現代でも、安い労働力がグローバル経済には必須であるのだが、その歴史的な背景の基礎知識として、本書のような本は必須だと思う。できれば日本語版を出版してほしいところである。
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"Slavery by Another Name," is a thought provoking and maddening book about slavery in the south during the turn of the twentieth century through the 1960's. You will become very angry when you read how Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Florida et al had local town city officials ready to arrest African Americans on made up trump up charges, such as vagrancy. Usually, an African American either took the train or walked to a neighboring town or city looking for work. The local Sheriff meets up with him and either says you owe Mr. Anderson $7.50 for a loan he never borrowed. You need to pay up now or you will be charged with xyz. Mr. Anderson pays for the debt plus new charges. Next the African American is brought before a judge and pronunced guilty and sentenced to 6 on up months of forced labor. He is then asked to sign a contract agreeing to the terms. Usually the forced laborer is illiterate and can't read the contract. He signs a "X" for his signature. These arrestees were held in the local town jail without basic living conditions. The Sheriff would sell them at a profit to regional mines, lumber yards and coal companies, farmers, and other forced labor camps. The monies were split between the pretend victim (Mr. Anderson), the judge and the sheriff. These labor camps treated their inmates worse than their African American ancestors before the Civil War. Once they arrived to work at the mines they were chained and shackled. Each slave was given a quota of product they were required to provide at the end of the day. Their days started at 3am or 4am and ended around 11pm. If they missed their quota they were harshly whipped by being stretched nakedly over a barrel to receive at least fifteen lashes. Many died from these daily beatings. Their threadbare clothes or in many cases no clothes were never washed. Lack of safety was another lethal issue. Because these labor camps were doing everything they could to save on expenses the mines, lumber yards and coal companies used century old equipment that increased loss of limbs and lives. Due to the lack of sanitary conditions disease ran rapid through the slave workers camps. The slaves (forced labor) lived in too small filthy hovels where they were chained together each night. They were fed substandard food each night and not enough to meet male caloric intake. Making the slaves weaker every work day. The details of the book stays with you to share with friends and family. I highly recommend this book if you want to learn more about slavery in the twentieth century. It is very topical with the kidnapping of the Nigerian girls.
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A superbly researched work that exposes how chattel slavery continued, on a literally industrial scale, in the United States until the 1940s. It reveals the connivance of the federal government in allowing these crimes against humanity to continue unchecked and the vast profits accumulated by individuals and corporations from the continued enslavement of Afrikan people in the US. The book reveals that it was the fear of international exposure of this continued slavery undermining US war propaganda; far more than any moral impetus that led to the federal government finally bringing slavery to an end in the US. The book is only spoiled by the refusal to support the obvious case for reparations that the text clearly makes. The author describes in methodical detail the economic basis for this mass exploitation and yet offers up the ridiculous idea of a museum as a suitable response to this vastly profitable slave industry. No surprise, but disappointing. A must read book nonetheless, particularly for Afrikan people under any illusions about what really took place in the US following the end of the Civil War.
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Great book, informative... Liked the way it focused on one family line and went into the various themes. I think most people wouldn't know how long the slave trade continued on for and the cunning entrapment that basically stole their lives completely. Recommend the read for anyone studying this piece of time and history.
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Além da inquestionável qualidade do conteúdo, fisicamente o livro é ótimo. A cor das folhas, o tamanho das letras, a qualidade das imagens, enfim, garantida está a satisfação do leitor.
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good book