Slavery’s Last Chapter

Slavery in America didn't end with the Civil War. Between 1865 and 1941 millions of African-Americans were forced to work with little or no pay and many were held against their will, according to Wall Street JournalAtlanta bureau chief Douglas A. Blackmon. He chronicles this sordid history in his latest book, "Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II." Blackmon talked with NEWSWEEK's Imani Cheers about "neoslavery" and its legacy. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What prompted you to write this book?
Douglas A. Blackmon: I was born in the Mississippi Delta in the fall of 1964 and grew up in an era of tremendous racial tumult. I wondered, what would happen if we viewed American companies through the same harsh prism of historical scrutiny that we were insisting a decade ago on examining German companies, in terms of their use of forced labor during World War II? I began to examine how it was that U.S. coal corporations had used thousands of forced laborers in coal mines throughout Alabama in the early part of the 20th century and how those events relate to the present.

Can you explain the concept of "neoslavery" and the "convict labor system"?
Neoslavery is a term to describe a whole range of ways in which all across the Southern United States in the late 19th century and deep into the 20th century millions of African-Americans found themselves in a form of de facto slavery and involuntary servitude. One part of neoslavery, "convict leasing," was the sentencing of prisoners to hard labor or to fine them outrageously, and [then] they were leased out to commercial interests such as farms, coal mines, turpentine production plants, lumber and railroad camps. This was the means by which the white South forced millions of other African-Americans to go along with de facto slavery that took on the form of sharecropping, abusive farm tenancy, land renting and labor contracts.

What types of "crimes" could African-Americans be charged with?
After the Civil War, all of the Southern states passed a series of laws, which were designed primarily to criminalize black life. For example, vagrancy statues made it a crime for any person to be unable to prove at any given moment that he was employed. Also, in every Southern state it was against the law for African-Americans to sell their crops after dark. The purpose was specifically to ensure that as a sharecropper you could only sell your crops to the landowner.

How many freed African-Americans were trapped in these systems from 1865 to the beginning of World War II?
It's impossible to determine the precise numbers, but in Alabama at least 200,000 African-American men were subjected to the most systematic form of neoslavery, the convict-leasing system. There were tens of millions of African-Americans that over this 80-year period either one way or another were forced to live on a farm or in a lumber camp or were forced into convict leasing by the perverted justice system.

How did the media play a role?
Southern newspapers played a huge role in fanning the flames of racial animosity and discontent and railed on for years against all efforts to ensure the civil rights of African-Americans. For example, the 1906 race riots in Atlanta. The city was swept up in a massive week of carnage, the destruction of black homes and the eviction of African-Americans from the city. This kind of media involvement and the use of racial violence as intimidation were incredibly common.