Slavery’s Last Chapter

We as Blacks need to recognize some things that have contributed to preventing us as a diaspora from achieving greater heights. First slaves have been made of many groups. It has and always wll be a class thing. That class with more power will seek to exploit those with lesser power. It still happens today. For gods sake the Native Americans had slaves. No one is beyond reproach. Next there are many forms of institutionalized stratification. You have the educational system whereby prices are inflated to prevent more of the masses fro acheiving independence. You have worker pay deparities where certain groups are paid differently according to race or gender. And you have organized religion where these same injustices are sanctioned by god. How many slave owners went to church every Sunday where he could read for himself where slavery was ok with god. If god is for it who can be against it. The battle for must be fought on may levels.

Constituion,

You're completely ignoring that Africa is also the continent with BY FAR the highest violent crime rate, so maybe their low incarcaration rate isn't such a good thing.

I was born in the South and proud of it. My family on my Father's side came from Europe in the 1730's. My Mother's side came over in the 1840's. When I graduated High school in 1974 I moved to Maaschusetts. I took the first job that cames along working in a sweat shop with illegal immigrants who were mostly from Portugal. I can tell you from first hand experience that in 1974 in a Northern State in the United Sates that forced Labor was alive and well and from what I hear it still is.

There are a few good museums in the South covering such abuses, including the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham. The author misses anotehr critical consquence. Companies like US Steel used the availability of forced free black labor to surpress unionization and poor white worker pay and working conditions as well. Such labor contracts with prisons were HUGE political plums and created imense corruptions and graft as well.

I'd be willing to bet this pratice didn't end as early as WWII. It most probably continued throught the south until each and every hamlet was personally delivered the message by writ or decree.

I wonder if it truly ended as early as WWII. I'd be willing to bet it went on as long as it could in each and every little hamlet throughout the south until one by one they got the message.

THE RAVEN, I left you a comment.

All of the individual issues relating to treatment of blacks in the south are a despicable part of American history from denial of voters rights to Jim Crow laws. They are indefensible. However something seemed a bit stretched to me when I read this excerpt. The black population of the entire United States was less than 9 million in 1900. That includes the northern states. The article suggests that 10's of millions of American Blacks were trapped in this situation. That seems to be if not a complete fabrication at least a gross exaggeration. Using loose statistics and generous gender and age distribution given the tendency for large families, that would mean 1 in 5 blacks were men of working age, to get to 10's of millions the black population would have needed to turn over about 20 times or be 50 million at any given time which it hasn't reached even today. If we're going to have a fair dialog about any issue related to race then we need to be willing to discuss every aspect and its impact on society. What is the total figure the U. S. Government has spent on social programs directed at minorities, from welfare to public housing projects? What has been the result of these programs. I don't know the answer to these questions but when I hear someone bring up the idea of reparations, it makes me curious. I do believe northern liberals were completely aware of the institutional treatment of blacks in the south. At that point the south still held massive sway in federal government. Money wasn't really thrown at the problem until the great depression, and not specifically at Black America untill the late 50's. In that time what have we spent? How have things really changed? If things haven't changed, why? What really needs to be done to change them? I don't think White America is afraid of this conversation.

Although false imprisonment is a large part of the crimes that were committed against black people during the years between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the World War II it was not the only crime committed. Selling innocent people into hard labor for no pay is still slavery no matter the situation and no matter the color of their skins. If a black person or white person, for that matter, took someone prisoner today and made that person work for no pay, they would be charged with false imprisonment and then the victim would have the ability to sue their illegal wardens for financial remuneration in a civil court. I hear a lot of excuses from white people today about slavery and the total impact of that once very popular institution. Slavery did not end after the Civil War. After the Civial War came jim crow laws, instutionalized racism, murder and oppression. It would be easier to simply admit that as great as this country is, it still has a lot to account for. And those white people who stood by and watched those atrocities happen without doing nothing to stop it are just as guilty as those people who committed them.

Tjrobison, you're mistaken if you think that you and your ancestors didn't "benefit" from free and/or forced slavery or neoslavery...every American gained a more industrialized, economically strong country by virtue of a society that could compete worldwide in record time due to its free labor. Unless your family was the only one living on a deserted island, it benefited from US coal, steel, power, etc. The point is that something serious was stolen from a people over hundreds of years and benefited another group of people (and their children over time) over hundreds of years (through the present day). The issue now is not whether this fact is in dispute- it's not- but is there anything this nation can do so that one group doesn't get to steal so much from another without restitution. In no other facet of life or civilized society is such obvious oppression condone so why should it just be ignored here. It's interesting how the group (and its heirs) that got all the benefits from this injustice now wants to say let bygones be bygones. If someone stole your most valuable possessions and caused you to have no income and your children or grandchildren found those possessions years later, I doubt you'd fault them for suing the person to reclaim your family's possessions. Now imagine if that kept happening to your family over and over and over and.... Why don't you have a problem with the ones who enslaved, stayed silent or benefited but have a problem with the victims? You're lucky this neoslavery doesn't really exist today (it exists in other forms believe me) so you can fool yourself in believing you're not a beneficiary.

The convict leasing system affected all the poor -- whites as well as African Americans ... albeit the system may have ended sooner for whites. A member of my family was leased as a convict into coal mines in East Tennessee in the 1890s.

"When President Franklin Roosevelt convened his cabinet to discuss retaliation, the main issue was propaganda and the Japanese ability to effectively embarrass America for the treatment of blacks in the South." I really have a hard time believing that, after the atrocious attack on the US and thousands of military and civilian deaths, the main topic of concern was Southern Blacks. I don't think FDR really cared about embarassment at that point, come on.