Slavery in America after our Civil War
It’s one thing to know that after the Civil War that black slaves were freed, and that following Reconstruction that Jim Crow laws sought to halt the social progress of the newly freed slaves. However, even though Jim Crow laws during the post-Reconstruction period are mentioned in our high school text books, apparently they don’t go far enough towards telling the story of neo-slavery in America after our nation’s Civil War.
Last week I heard an interview with Douglas Blackmon, on Here & Now, on this subject:
Slavery did not end with the end of the Civil War. In fact it went on in a different form until World War II. Free blacks were arrested on trumped up charges all across the south and were leased to landowners and industries. They were often forced to work in coal mines or lumber mills under horrific conditions. Douglas Blackmon uncovers this history in his new book “Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.”
Again, it’s one thing to “know” about what conditions were like for African-Americans after the Civil War, it is quite another to so vividly hear about the systemic suppression of human beings after their so-called emancipation.
