Blackmon, Douglas A.

Slavery by another name : the re-enslavement of Black people in America from the Civil War to World War II / Douglas A. Blackmon. - 1st ed. - New York : Doubleday, - x, 468 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Includes bibliographical references (pages 407-459) and index.

A note on language -- Introduction : The bricks we stand on -- The slow poison -- The wedding : fruits of freedom -- An industrial slavery : "Niggers is cheap" -- Slavery's increase : "Day after day we looked death in the face & was afraid to speak" -- Green Cottenham's world : "The negro dies faster" -- Harvest of an unfinished war -- The slave farm of John Pace : "I don't owe you anything" -- Slavery is not a crime : "We shall have to kill a thousand ... to get them back to their places" -- The indictments : "I was whipped nearly every day" -- A summer of trials, 1903 : "The master treated the slave unmercifully" -- A river of anger : the South is "an armed camp" -- The disapprobation of God : "It is a very rare thing that a negro escapes" -- New South rising : "This great corporation." pt. 1. 1. 2. 3. 4. pt. 2. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Slavery affirmed : "Cheap cotton depends on cheap niggers" -- 12. The final chapter of American slavery -- The arrest of Green Cottenham : a war of atrocities -- Anatomy of a slave mine : "Degraded to a plane lower than the brutes" -- Everywhere was death : "Negro quietly swung up by an armed mob ... all is quiet" -- Atlanta, the South's finest city : "I will murder you if you don't do that work" -- Freedom : "In the United States one cannot sell himself" -- Epilogue : The ephemera of catastrophe. pt. 3. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

A sobering account of a little-known crime against African Americans, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today. 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 "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 and compelled into years of involuntary servitude. 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.--From publisher description.

Pulitzer Prize, General Nonfiction, 2009. American Book Award, 2008

9780385506250 0385506252 9780385722704 0385722702

2007034500


1800-1999


African Americans--Civil rights--History--19th century.
African Americans--Civil rights--History--20th century.
African Americans--Employment--History.
African Americans--Crimes against--History.
African American prisoners--Social conditions.
Forced labor--History.--United States
Convict labor--History.--United States
Slavery--History.--United States
African American prisoners--Social conditions.
African Americans--Civil rights.
African Americans--Crimes against.
African Americans--Employment.
Convict labor.
Forced labor.
Race relations.
Slavery.


United States--Race relations--History--19th century.
United States--Race relations--History--20th century.
United States.


History.

E185.2 / .B545 2008

305.896/073

305.896 B629s