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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

Makes real the devastation of reconstruction, in particular the use of county and state justice systems to enslave black men under even worse conditions than was usual in slavery, since even the property stake in their well-being was not there since there were always more men to be gotten from jail. ( )

Blackmon illuminates a period of history, following the Civil War all the way up to Pearl Harbor, during which many of America's southern states reinstituted the enslavement of huge numbers of African Americans (who, you will see, possessed illusory Constitutional rights) to support its burgeoning farming and industrial development. While I was well aware of the means by which so many African Americans were terrorized by lynchings and abuse, and legally stripped of their Constitutional voting rights, to ensure continued white oppression following the Civil War, I was totally unaware of the widespread reenslavement of African Americans. From speaking with others, general ignorance of this important part of our American heritage is shared by many others. For that reason alone, this is an important book. It will have a lasting impact upon my understanding of civil rights in general, and my understanding of how we in America arrived at where we are today.

As the book describes, following the Civil War, the south was economically destitute. Neither its farms, nor its industries could redevelop or compete without some form of slavery. Consequently, through perceived necessity it was discovered that by falsely arresting black men, women and children, and charging them with minor subjective crimes such as vagrancy and the like, the "defendants" could be sentenced to prison by state and county officials, and then leased to businesses to serve their terms. It was a win/win situation for both the local governments collecting lease payments, and the businesses obtaining labor for negligible cost. And, as Blackmon points out, the treatment of African Americans at the hands of business owners was often much worse than it had been when slavery was legal. The businesses had no incentive to treat "temporary" slave workers as anything more than a short-term commodity that should be squeezed to its absolute limit. As a result, Blackmon sadly documents how many workers ended up dying on the job under deplorable conditions and then unceremoniously buried in mass graves. It's hard to imagine something worse than the pre-1865 slavery, but Blackmon provides example after example (Blackmon is not known as a historian, but rather as a journalist for the Wall Street Journal. Nevertheless, his history generally appears well documented and solid).

Blackmon's research further exposes how the Northern ideals vis-a-vis equality, fairness and African Americans, which peeked around the end of the Civil War and which were codified in the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, slowly eroded following the Civil War. As Southern blacks migrated north to join in America's industrial revolution, Northerners too lost what racial ideals they (or at least many of them) once embraced. Plessy v. Ferguson is a sad and shining example of the erosion of American ideals. Slavery Under Another Name demonstrates how both the Federal government (all three branches) and the North in general turned a blind eye toward the obvious systematic indebted servitude occurring in the southern states, and how some northern corporations benefitted from the practice.

The book is not without its heroes. I was particularly moved by the brave turn-of-the-century efforts of Alabama U.S. Attorney Warren Reese, with the assistance of at most a couple Secret Service agents (the FBI did not yet exist), in indicting and exposing many of the perpetrators behind the neo-slavery schemes. But, as the book describes, despite the overwhelming evidence amassed by these fine public servants, their efforts ultimately failed (having prosecutorial experience myself, I found it interesting to see how and why the cases failed). It would take another 50 years or so, and much more bloodshed, before forward-thinking civil rights ideals would once again be championed with any real success.

I've always understood that America owes a great debt of gratitude to all of the slaves who were forced to create so much of the infrastructure upon which this country grew and prospered. Until now, I never appreciated that the systematic enslavement of African Americans did not end with the Civil War. While this book does not delve into the issue of reperations in any detailed fashion, it should provoke further conversation about what debt our society owes for the crimes of its past. History is replete with examples of societies being unjustly enriched through the systematic oppression of certain classes of people. The greatness of the American system is in it's ability to judge itself and evolve. Blackmon has added to the evidence by which we must judge ourselves.