SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME

Ever wondered why African Americans haven't recovered from slavery 150 years ago? Thats because slavery continued at a large scale as little as 50 years ago. The southern establishment used the criminal justice system and forced labor to force freed slaves back into involuntary servitude. Why haven't we heard of it before? Hear it from the author on Bill Moyer's Journal on PBS

Journalist Douglas Blackmon tells another tale of freedom postponed and denied in SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME. Blackmon's book tells the unfamiliar story of "neo-slavery" that reached beyond the de-facto slavery of tenant farming and debt peonage. Blackmon first became intrigued by this episode of U.S. history while researching a story for THE WALL STREET JOURNAL which documented how U.S. Steel Corp. relied on forced black laborers in Alabama coal mines. He discovered:

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.

It was a system that Blackmon found carried on in some areas until the early days of World War II.