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Loading... Slavery By Another Nameby Douglas A. Blackmon
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. This very important work, by the Wall Street Journal's Atlanta bureau chief, documents how slavery in fact continued for four generations after the Civil War, until World War II, when it became clear that Japan and Germany could have a propaganda field day with the treatment of African Americans. If you wonder why race relations are still touchy in America, this is a good place to start. (  ) dunyazade | Sep 11, 2009 |  Beyond excellent. What Blackmon refers to as the Age of Neoslavery has been poorly understood by generations of Americans – often willfully so. As someone who considered himself reasonably well informed about post-Reconstruction political realities and Jim Crow segregation, I found in “Slavery by Another Name” a lesson in my own ignorance that was impossible to ignore. In his epilogue, he writes: “Certainly the great record of forced labor across the South demands that any consideration of the progress of civil rights remedy in the United States must acknowledge that slavery, real slavery, didn’t end until 1945 – well into the childhoods of the black Americans who are only now reaching retirement age.” The story of that 20th century slavery is gruesome for many, many reasons… and it deserves to be heard. ( ) Narboink | Jul 25, 2009 | This is a powerful book and my vocabulary is too small to begin to do it the justice it deserves. This was not easy to read but I couldn't stop talking about it as I read it. This book should be on the REQUIRED READING list of everyone in this country, of all ages and colors. We seem to have repeated horrific behavior to other human beings throughout history, and it just continues. How can this be hidden and repeated again and again? I was fascinated with the epilogue where some of the descendants on both sides---although there are more than two sides in all of this---varied so much on wanting to know the past and wanting to forget it or remain uninformed. And I wonder what it means that this country became great, whatever "greatness" means, in part only on the backs of slave labor. How does that make this country great? The companies that evolved from this horrible past think, for the most part, that it should remain in the past--it doesn't relate to what they are now. I don't know how you can ever get over all of this. How can all of this be forgiven---not just the act(s) but the inability to ever put a stop to it. Unforgivable on the part of all. ( ) nyiper | Jul 17, 2009 | Covering the time between the Civil War and WWII, Blackmon's book investigates the practice of slavery through a system of corrupt local officials who charged African Americans with trumped-up crimes and then sold them as labor to company mines & farms. It primarily covers instances that occurred in Georgia and Alabama between the late 1800's and early 1900's, although companies and individuals continued to benefit from this abhorrent "legal" slavery up to World War II (when FDR realized the Axis powers were using the secondary status of African Americans as propaganda for their efforts). It's a meticulously researched effort and well worthy of its recent Pulitzer, exposing a shameful period of our history that's written in many textbooks as being post-slavery and, therefore, more enlightened in terms of race relations. (  ) mikewick | Jun 18, 2009 | Some of the parts of this book are tedious and not apparently pertinent, but when one finishes the book even those tedious parts are shown to be pertinent. Basically, the author researches the system, especially common in Alabama, whereby black men were railroaded to being convicted of a petty crime and then given into the power of white men who would require them to work for them or others usually under bad conditions. Especially interesting is the effort to convict persons of peonage in 1903, and how the justice system in Alabama was a system for injustice and horror. I would have preferred the author to be more objective and let the facts speak for themselves rather than his telling us how bad things were--it would have made for a better book. ( ) Schmerguls | May 20, 2009 | 
In “Slavery by Another Name” Douglas A. Blackmon eviscerates one of our schoolchildren’s most basic assumptions: that slavery in America ended with the Civil War.
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0385506252, Hardcover)In this groundbreaking historical exposé, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history—an “Age of Neoslavery” that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:58 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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