Humbling Response
The reaction to the book has been so gratifying this past week. I’ve heard from dozens of people, white and black, who have their own stories of how Neoslavery touched the lives of their families. I’ll start posting some of those messages over the next few days.
A blog at NPR.com connected to my appearance on Talk of the Nation drew a long and energetic exchange. Some of the posters were historians wanting to make sure that other scholars’ research into issues in my book weren’t overlooked. Below is the response I posted to that traffic:
“To Kathleen Murray and Alex Lichtenstein, I hope you’ll read “Slavery by Another Name” and see that it energetically acknowledges many scholars, such as Pete Daniel (“who wrote the seminal work on twentieth-century peonage”), Mary Ellen Curtin (“no work rivals the research” for prior to 1900), Jack Bergstresser, the industrial archeologist who first postulated the identities of those buried in the great un-marked burial grounds on the edge of Birmingham–each of whom gave me valued advice during the seven years of work on this project.
But the book also expands beyond past research, offers a reinterpretation of events over a much longer period of time and wider geography, and demonstrates how this history directly ties to the present. It is unapologetically a challenge to the views of some conventional historians. It begins with an analysis of how the new slavery was rooted in specific events before the Civil War and follows the chain of events through the end of World War II, a full century of social history, and a period I argue we should call the “Age of Neoslavery.” What most distinguishes my book, though, is that it confronts historical realities that few U.S. scholars have been able to reconcile themselves to–that huge numbers of black Americans across the South were re-enslaved through interlocking mechanisms deep into the 20th century and that these were not inevitable or accidental. Southern blacks were not merely abused, politically deprived or inconvenienced, as much history taught many of us. They were enslaved into coerced labor. That is what a fair reckoning of the evidence tells us. Some historians and researchers have inadvertently minimized this reality, partly by analysis that failed to see the interconnection between forms of neoslavery, partly through a failure to tap untouched evidence in courthouses across the South, partly because this interpretation challenges some pillars of American mythology. Some have also accepted a presumption that it is impossible to re-animate the lives of the impoverished and illiterate millions of African-Americans drawn into neoslavery–or establish the severity of the limits imposed on their lives. My book builds upon the extraordinary past work of many scholars whom I enormously admire. But it rejects any suggestion that because slavery as a legally defined condition no longer existed, we cannot call the re-subjugation of these African-American families what it truly was: a new slavery. And it is simply untrue that we cannot reconstruct the lives of those who were crushed by these events and the vast scale of the injuries they received.
Historians should not be unnerved that this unknown or misunderstood past is being shared with a broad audience. Based on the exchanges here and dozens of emails I have received in recent days, few Americans understand these events–whether the interpretation offered by most scholars or mine. This is not a topic about which everything has already been said. The millions of neoslaves abandoned by history deserve many more books yet.”
As editor you get the last shot. And you took it.
I am very pleased to see this subject discussed and brought into the current discussions of race and politics. It is always revealing when students in my political science courses show how little they know or are aware of when it comes to race and politics in the United States. Many of my African-American students are unaware of the past relationship of both parties to the issue of race and how those relationships have twisted and shifted and turned over time. Thank you for bringing this into the light once again.
My whole thrust was how whites would act. You then ‘turned that around’ to a new question and answered it for me. (Really) Then you took my ‘answer’ and used it to reveal my inner racism. Hmmm.
Given that the South in those days consisted of 99% Dem and 1% Repub (arguably), I find it difficult to understand that they are equally to blame. (As above: Hmmmm) I cannot prove that the Repubs were innocent, but how can you say that ‘they are all guilty’? (Were the Jews facists because they were 1% of the German people? Or should they be judged separately?)
A very challenging conversation that brings us back to the beginning. Thanks for your attention and courtesy. Bye bye.
(Hmmm ‘editor at the WSJ’! I just looked.)
Joe, you made it clear through all your posts, that no matter how many documented facts might be presented, you refuse to accept the historical reality of what happened in that period of time. You appear to be so enamored of this simpleton argument that Republicans are virtuous in every way and at all time, and Democrats are nasty and evil in every way and at all times, that you are blind to any meaningful exchange of information. Your way out of the empirical, fact-based problem of the immense evidence against your position is to fall back on a “human nature” argument. How could it be that a rational person would X when they had the option of Y? It’s a clever device for sidestepping inconvenient facts. You get to end up saying, as you essentially did, “No matter what the evidence is, no sane person could do that.”
All that I did was observe that you appare to apply this “reasonable man” argument only to white people. How could white believe and do things that were illogical? you asked over and over again. And yet, you see no such message, apparently, in the curious question of why black people would wholesale abandon the Republican Party by the 1960s and embrace the very party that, as you correctly say, had so cruelly mistreated them for decades. Why on earth would rational, intelligent people do that when, according to you, the Republican party remained their truest and purest friend, Joe? There are only two possible answers–that either African-Americans or fools, or they knew quite precisely how the table of justice had turned, who was on their side, and who was against them. You have to believe one or the other.
Again, before I sign off from the is exchange as well, nothing in what I have written to you is an observation about the Republican Party of today. That is an entirely different debate. The racial perspectives of the two parties today are radically different from 40 years ago, and indeed there is more African-American interest in conservative politics today than at any time since the great defection to the Democrats began. This has been a conversation about the historical transformations of the two parties.
My point about Mr Rice in the early 1950’s was just that Repubs were more willing to work with Blacks than Dems and are therefore less racist.
I had to think through what you said.
We could exchange politicians: for instance J Wm Fulbright, Al Gore Sr, Robert Byrd stayed with the Dem party and they are certifiable racists.
Jim Eastland – did he change parties?
George Wallace – did he join the Rep. party?
If you are saying that ‘dozens ‘ of southern Democrats fought the civil rights legislation – well, yes. But as Democrats, not Republicans.
Look, I am starting from a logical argument, i.e. why leave the dominant party where you can have power and go to the ineffectual one where you cannot effect your desires?
Can you show that Repubs in the south were systematically more racist than Dems? Ran on more racist platforms?
(Anecdotally: Condoleezza Rice’s father had to go to the Repub party to register in spite of the Dem refusal.)
Joe, we can go back and forth like this for days. I have said to you from the beginning, just as my book and the film make abundantly clear, that the Republican and Democratic Parties both utterly failed on the issue of civil rights for the full century after the civil war. Telling me that there were white supremacist Democrats is simply repeating back to me the points my book already makes. I have also written at tremendous length, in The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere, about the historical affinity of African-Americans and the Republican Party. Not only Condi Rice’s father, but Martin Luther King himself was once registered as a Rebublican. I have acknowledged the importance of that history more so, I suspect, than any other major current U.S. journalist.
I accept that you probably sincerely believe the story line that you’re repeating here–in which Republicans are blameless through that century and the Republican Party of today is exactly the same party that Abe Lincoln led. But I am deeply familiar with the details of this period, and your view simply does not square with the facts. It is an invention of talk radio.
But let’s leave that aside for a minute. Your basic argument, repeated in your last email, is that no white racist would be so foolish as to become a Republican because the Democrats were already such powerful racists. You suggest that no rational person would do such a thing, so it couldn’t have happened. That is your point.
Well turn that around: Why would any black person, specifically why would Martin Luther King, after he and his family voted consistently with the Republican Party for 80 years whenever they were allowed to vote, join up with this white supremacist machine you say the Democratic Party was (and presumably is, in your view)? How could King or any person of even marginal intelligence do such a thing? Your answer–the talk radio answer–is that they were “brainwashed” into this. Really? Really?
That you would believe such a thing likely reveals more about your true views of African-Americans than any other aspect of this exchange.
John Carreon:
I did not mean to make excuses for Democrats who had absolute power and responsibility in the ‘Solid South’. My point is that the Repubs had no power and so I am making excuses for them (in the south. Elsewhere, maybe not so much).
Douglas Blackmon:
‘Black southerners were “wedded”’
I see where I am not clear. The past tense referred to the time from FDR and not prior. Since FDR they have been totally pro Dem.
My major point in the blog is that no racist in the 60’s would join a Repub party when they had a perfectly good Dem party to ride with.
Perhaps I am a little testy about my (admitted) amateur status.
Joe, I may have misjudged you initially, when I thought you were not interested in a reasonable conversation. But it seems that you are, and I appreciate that. First, let me say that I’m not trying to suggest that the Republican Party of today is the same thing as the Dixie-crats of 1964. However, when you say this: “no racist in the 60′s would join a Repub party when they had a perfectly good Dem party to ride with” you’re overlooking the main thing that happened in the 1960s and 1970s. Millions of African-Americans, finally liberated by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, began registering to vote for the first time and suddenly tilted the old southern Democratic party toward support for civil rights. As a result, the Democratic Party became *intolerable* to raging white supremacists like Strom Thurmond, Jim Eastland, George Wallace, and dozens of others who led the fight against the civil rights movement and millions of their followers. They began abandoning the Democratic Party in droves, and became, in a few cases, independents, and in far more cases joined the Republican Party. Over the years, Thurmond, Eastland, and others of similar ilk tried to explain away their records of abject white supremacist agendas, but where those figures moved as Democrats began to allow in black voters is just a clinical historical fact. No amount of wishing, or talk-radio historical fairy tale fabrications can change that.
Joe:
After reading your post I’d say you qualify as one of those “wait a little longer” people. Stop making excuses for the inaction of so many (Democrats & Republicans) that had the power to put an end to this morally sick time.
Moderator:
To tell the story of the Solid South and blythly overlook the fact that the South was a one-party system where ‘absolute power corrupted absolutely’ is a distortion. In your reply you said again (in effect) “everybody did it”. No, sir, anyone in the South that objected would have (literally or figuratively) been caned like that Senator who’s name I forget, while another Democrat stood by in the Senate with a pistol to shoot anyone who intervened.
And to imply that anyone in the north could have impacted the situation is ….. not accurate. I don’t know more of TR’s story but I can imagine that even the President would find himself without power to impose a solution. Like the ‘naive Minnesotan’ he was unable to break through.
“The documentary makes crystal clear that both the Republican and Democratic parties failed African-Americans over the span of many decades. “ Yes, in the way that a jay-walker and a murderer are both criminals.
My criticism of you, sir, is that you pretend that this was bi-partisan, which makes you feel good about being (I assume) a member of a party that was willing to put up with this, so Democrats in those days could bask in the support of the ‘Solid South’ to gain power.
Yes, sir, I am criticizing you for telling half the story. Or, in your words “twisting parts of history”. Yes, I am aggravated to hear Democrats recount history but omit what redounds to their party’s discredit.
“It was that coalition of Democrats and Republicans who then passed the civil rights acts of the 1960s, over the bitter opposition of southern Democrats who subsequently, by and large, became Republicans. “ And there you go again with two mis-statements:
1- the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was ‘written in the office of Ev Dirkson’. The Republicans in both Houses used their minority power (with LBJ’s acquiescence) ‘to stuff it up the nose of the Dem’s’ (my interpretation). Then Dems had to vote for it (60%) or look like fools.
2- Dems who became Repubs. Is also false but too long for here. See Southern Strategy at http://www.jimspoliticalstuff.blogspot.com
And you also say that I should leave history to the professionals. An amateur like myself should just sit down, shut up and accept your version of the story. Meh.
Joe, I don’t mean to be unkind. But your facts are terribly wrong, and you just don’t make any sense. That “Southern Strategy” blog item you linked to is just nonsense! Black southerners were “wedded” to southern segregationist Democrats? How was that, given that 95% of them weren’t allowed to vote? And the tiny minority who could vote cast their ballots overwhelmingly for Republicans through the first half of the 20th century. It was only after Roosevelt and the northern Democrats–as the film says–began adopting at least a mild civil rights agenda that African-Americans began moving to the Democratic column. Joe, you seem like a smart guy, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. Sorry.
(I also never called you an amateur or told you to leave history alone. I believe every American should care about history. But not these made up versions that you have embraced.)
I listened carefully to the film but I never heard the name of the political community that could put such s terrible system in place. I heard of Teddy Roosevelt (Republican) but that was not the party in absolute control in the Solid South. Then it came to me that it was the Democr.. No, never! It must have been some other rascally party because it could not have been the party of that wonderful Franklin Delano Roosevelt who brought freedom from that terrible system. NO! It must have been some other, more evil politicians who made this travesty possible. So you were very right to keep that name unmentioned. Otherwise there would be a great backlash against that party if ever they ran for political office and asked black folk to support them. No. Better you never bring that up.
/sarcasm off
It doesn’t seem that you did listen carefully to the film. I rejected your earlier post because, even more so than this one, it misrepresented what is and isn’t in the film. I have no issue with anyone disagreeing with my interpretations, or those of others involved in making the film. But I’m not interested in posts appearing on this site that describe the book or the film incorrectly, written by people who either haven’t seen the film, couldn’t follow it or have chosen to depict it incorrectly.
The documentary makes crystal clear that both the Republican and Democratic parties failed African-Americans over the span of many decades. Indeed, virtually all white Americans, in every region of the country, by and large went along with the denial of citizenship to African-Americans and abided the their re-subjugation in the South. That’s the bottom line of what happened from the 1870s to the 1940s.
The film makes clear that Abraham Lincoln, Republican, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. And that his successor, Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, encouraged the return of white supremacist control of the South. That Teddy Roosevelt, Republican, was initially a friend to African-American citizenship and then turned terribly against them. That Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, extended Jim Crow segregation throughout the federal government. And that finally it was not until the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt that the first serious and sustained effort to defend the actual freedom and civil rights of blacks began. Even those efforts were deeply flawed, but they did open the door for the first time for African-Americans to begin climbing out of poverty through their own hard work in schools and jobs.
I realize that you are not be a serious person as far as history. Your interest is only in how to twist parts of history to serve a current day political agenda. But the facts simply don’t support the myth currently being pushed by you and some other people that the Republicans were historically the good guys on race, and that Democrats were the villians, and that black people have blindly gotten things in reverse. The truth is that Abe Lincoln was a good guy, and that after that both parties failed blacks abjectly until the World War II period, when Democrats in the north and some Republicans began to support civil rights and economic opportunity for African-Americans.
It was that coalition of Democrats and Republicans who then passed the civil rights acts of the 1960s, over the bitter opposition of southern Democrats who subsequently, by and large, became Republicans. But “Slavery by Another Name”, book or film, isn’t about that. It is an indictment of America’s failure to preserve the great moral victory of the Civil War, and the mythologies we adopted to hide that failure. Republicans and Democrats and white Americans across the land were all collaborators in that conspiracy against justice.
Very powerful program. Slavery is not a distant memory.
I I am watching the documentary on PBS now, I don’t know if I have the stomach to see it in one sitting. I am recording it to watch it as I can. Sickening. I’m a naive Minnesotan. I had no clue. I am so grateful that this horror is getting examined in this depth. You’re doing God’s work, Mr. Blackmon. Keep talking!!!
An astonishing, genuine set of insights from your book and for me and many other Americans, utter gratitude to you for writing it. Also, the book necessarily pour cold water on Obama speech on race when he tried to pretend that black and white hold the same responsibilities concerning racism!! But he is a politician! The book also upholds some of the great insights of Reverend Wright. And more important: it tells white conservatives many who have only been here and their families for a couple of generations as opposed to black Americans who were here at the country’s birth to stop telling us what our NARRATIVE SHOULD BE IN TERMS OF HOW WE see, love, reject and accept America! As former Secretary Rice has said, two people were at the founding of this country, The Europeans and the Africans. And it started with a birth defect and we are and have been trying to rectify it. Besides those two fundamental insights, the book also gives me great satisfaction in how it supports my argument with a brilliant nephew of mine who wonders why “we have not accumulated the requisite and generational wealth as much as white folks?” And of course with him reading critics that have no real sense of our history and frankly don’t want a true knowledge but want to continue to hustle the notion that “if you work hard, and stay out of trouble, everything will turn out right ” obviously haven’t read your book!
George Abruzzese I suppose is frightened that black people will demand reparations or rather, find in your book an enormous justification for reparations, but then that’s not black people fault or the fault of the “race hustlers.” We didn’t outrageously exploit American citizens, buddy! And this book is not only with “historical significance,” but FULL OF HISTORICAL TRUTH!
Russell, Mr Obama is a politician, true. He is a graceful politician, who, since his election, has used diplomacy and conciliation to govern. I often fume that he won’t just say the facts and let everybody just deal with it. But he is not that type of person, which might be why the Rev. Wright was speaking the words Mr. Obama could not without being tarred and feathered. It’s bad enough now, with the obstinacy in Congress and the hate-radio attacks on him. The distrust between the races makes it hard for ordinary individuals to make a difference, but perhaps wide distribution of the information in this book will help bring about a dialogue between people of all colors and backgrounds, leading to a better country. But, given the tendency to deny since the fairness doctrine broke down, I’m not holding my breath. Sadly.
I have just now come across your site & watched a preview of the forthcoming PBS documentary. Looking forward to seeing that and reading your book. My father told me many years ago about his father escaping from a situation much like the one described in the excerpt. At the time I was very young & could not quite comprehend the full scope of what he was telling me. I only wished that I had asked him for more details as I got older before he passed away. My grandfather had died before I was born. I look forward to reading your book.
Such a gloomy morning in West Al. It is May 5 2010. The anniversary of the disaster. I know for myself, although I had very little direct info on the happening, I get misty eyed thinking especially of my Dad sitting on the bridge and waiting on his brother Jim. Mr Carradine has set up a display at the West Jefferson school through Thur. of this week.. I have a copy of a ballad written at the time. I found it in a 1917 Atlas. Although mimeographed it is legible. Mr Carradine found a photo of my Uncle who was about 18 and had been working in the mine for years. Not so much for those relatives, but we are losing our Country to ones who have no concern for the prices paid by our forefathers. Speak up. Gerorge
While these deplorable facts remain to haunt us, Rest assured that many whites as well as free blacks were involved in the similar situations. My father was on the river bridge in 1910 at Palos Mine when the explosion killed 90 + people including a mailman and another small boy on the same bridge. My father went to work in the mines at twelve years of age. He probably was employed here also. So many of the men had come from England to Pennsylvania to B’ham
to more of the same old same old they had in the dank pits in England. They also were victims of the Molly McGuires who followed them here. I think your research and literary work is of immense value,but while off the subject, the other participants regardless of race were victims also. I have original news reports of segregated morgues at the site. Black women were allowed to identify their relatives but it was considered improper for the white women to identify their mates.
wow. so informative. keep up the good work.
To George Abruzzese i leave you this quote from George Santayana ” Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ” Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Can you tell the Jews to forget the Holocaust? If you are ashamed of the past, face it and accept it in order to overcome your shame and you will be free……
I have just spent the last twenty four hours reading your book. Today, on Father’s day, I have regaled my children and a number of friends with the new historical truth…It is always exciting to learn new twists to the story of the world, but it is horrible for America and American historians to have perpetuated the myths of the south and of Thomas Dixon, as fact…it is even more horrible that America allowed neo-slavery to develop and be maintained. I guess they didn’t know about this slavery in the south…as the Germans never knew about the extermination camps! Let us see what reaction this work gets, it took us years before the destruction of Native Americans was admitted into curriculums…and this may be as tough a part of American history as there can be to tell.
I have just finished listening to your talk, Slavery by Another Name, given on 3-31-08 and rebroadcast today 6-14-08 on c-span. I am so thankful you did this work although sickening as it must have been to you it was as I see it a revelation ment to be for our nation’s road to healling and health. My we all ask for God’s mercy, forgiveness and strength to do the work we must continue to do.
You made an assertion that the involuntary slavery of African-Americans ended during the 40’s. I beg to differ. I met an “individual” from S.C. whom was interned at such a camp during the 70’s or 80’s in N.C. He escaped and later returned to S.C. He would further state that upon his return to S.C., during the early morning hours, he spotted the “slave catchers” from the camp looking once again for unwitting prospects to take back to N.C. Until I heard you discuss this particular fact on the Tavis Smiley Show, I didn’t believe it. But now I do. He told me this “now verified truth” last year in 2007. Upon my return to S.C., their have been a myriad of “hidden truths” that have been unearthed. Keep up the good work.
Thank you so much Mr. Blackmon for giving voice to all those men and women who endured this “re-enslavement” that many of us today find difficult to reconcile with the notion that we live in a “democracy”. I often recall the stories of my father about the harsh life of sharecropping in Southwest Georgia during the 1920s and 30s. I think for years I have had an outline of what life was like for blacks during that era, but you did so much with your book to help color it all in for me. I am just beginning the book, but from the very first page I found it absolutely compelling. Without yet having finished the book, I am encouraging friends and colleagues to get your book and to host book discussions/parties in our homes to help facilitate the racial healing so many of our leaders talk about. Again, THANKS !!!
Douglas, your excellent book shines a bright light into a dark corner of human behavior. The roots of neoslavery you describe spring from prejudice and ethnocentrism, and economics and politics. Good economic and political outcomes to the perpetrators helps stimulate and ‘institutionalize’ the practices described by you. Prejudice and ethnocentrism enables us to ‘dehumanize’ and demonize others. The U.S. government condoned and supported policies that created economic and social neoslavery well after WWII in the form of, for example, real estate and banking practices. These practices made it difficult for certain minorities to build economic wealth based on real estate when compared to white Americans in similar economic circumstances; thus limiting minority members’ ability to become self-employed, as well as supporting a continuation of geographically segrated society. Slavery is alive and well throughout much of the world today in the form of indentured workers, child ‘soldiers,’ kidnapped sex workers, etc. It respects no lines of color or ethnicity. It is a disease of the human soul that reflects a failure of morals and imagination. The cure? Respect yourself, and then treat others as you would like to be treated.
Mr. Abruzzese’s voice rings similiar to that voice of those tragically ancient minds who condone the enslavement of freemen. Mr. Abruzzese and his sentiments would be familiar to those who gave similiar justification for the crimes committed by the Third reich in Nazi germany.
I look forward to reading the book. I listened to you today on Sirius and could not believe what I was hearing. I am just shocked and amazed that you were able to write this book. I think a documentary or movie needs to be produced. Everyone needs to know the truth.
Doug, It was a rare privilege to meet you last week at the AJC. Thanks for your amazing, eye-opening work. It will probably take a second reading for me to grasp all that is in it, but it will be worth the time.
I want to thank you for your work. Thank you for all of our ancestors who have died amidst the lies and the silence of corporate and national greed.I used to wonder why my late maternal grandmother would say, “I’ll never go back to Georgia!”. I used to wonder why my folks in the Delta would say, “why you wanna know? leave that alone.” It’s a painful past – wounds that go deep into the history and psyche of a people, a people who thought they were going to gain their freedom only to be disappointed and subjected to another kind of atrocity. Again, I want to thank you for exposing this – so that we can hear it – discuss it – analyze it – learn from it – tell our children the truth about it – and maybe we can heal from it.
The sentiments expressed by Mr. Abruzzese above are so wrong-headed to me. Suppression of history, among other harms, aids and abets American terrorists, such as those tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center (www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/intrep.jsp). Conversely, truthful (or as truthful as humanly possible) historical accounting is indispensable to our understanding of how people and societies behave. And the clearer that understanding is, the better able we are to govern our future–one better than our past.
I’ve just inadvertantly stumbled upon the title this morning and read your most recent blog posting. It never made sense to me that slavery “disappeared” with the end of the Civil War, as we learned in school. It was a complex system, not a single independent entity. If you remove a piece of a system, the system itself will reconstitute that role in another form or forms. But, I thought I must be wrong to think so, since no one ever wrote or spoke about it. I’d mistakenly assumed something that serious would have been trumpeted. Are we still engaged in even more polished vestiges of what you discovered or has there been significant systemic change? What’s been carried forward? Obviously, I’ve got to read the book 🙂 Thank
Can America ever be allowed to overcome this legacy or will it be necessary to see the country torn apart by it. I do not believe books such as yours, despite their historical significance, can ever help to heal the deep racial wounds that afflict our country. America’s race hustlers use books like yours as fuses to enrage the black community and permits them to exploit racism rather than heal it.
A wound cannot heal by putting a bandage over the injury without first removing the buckshot that caused the problem. Knowledge is a good thing and essential for understanding and healing, Not dealing with the wound of slavery after the wahh is exactly what led to this disgraceful situation.
With knowledge perhaps it will be easier to deal with prison labor leased out to private companies and the ‘privatization’ of the prison system. I see that travesty as slavery by another name. Drug laws that punish( mostly ) black people harder for crack possession than they do for possession of the coke sniffed by the better off, (usually) white people with connections, are a direct descendant of earlier 20th century legal punishments.
It was a sad day when the south got more representation in Congress than the rest of the country. I live in a south that, outside of major cities, doesn’t value education, unlike other parts of the country, where education is important. Now I’m going to order the book and get educated. It will be hard to read, no doubt, but of value non-the-less.
I have just read your piece in the Wall Street Journal and ordered the book to read. You have done a great service by giving some of the victims of this horrific practice the chance to once again have a name and a voice. And, by making your readers reexamine our own history and that of our country. I recently heard Henry Louis Gates in an interview with Tavis Smiley say that the roots of racism are economic. But where are the roots of such unbelievable cruelty and inhumanity? And, in a way the more shocking revelation that it was only the spectre of world war that moved Roosevelt to intervene to stop these crimes. If there had been no World War, would this neoslavery still exist?