Slavery by Another Name:

This is the title of perhaps the most important book published in 2008. To those of us that lived through the civil rights movement and never quite got it this book is essential reading. Until you read this book you might still hold to the belief that the antebellum South was benign. Nothing could be further from the truth. This well researched work reveals the ugliness that was the industrial south of the 1880 to 1943. In fact the abuse did not begin to end until Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat to a white man on a Monterrey Alabama bus in December of 1955.

Without the perspective provided by this book understanding the continuing racial and political divisions in America simply can not be grasped. Things as simple as distrust of the criminal justice system I now understand. But more subtle points such as State’s Rights are brought into clear focus. The pivotal decisions are Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Under the guise of “separate but equal” (Plessy v. Ferguson) southern abuse of freed slaves continued despite the fact that debtor involuntary servitude had been outlawed by federal peonage statue of 1867 as well as the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.

The 13th Amendment was the first amendment to the US Constitution in 60 years and was rapidly followed by the 14th and 15th Amendment. These amendments finally stated the federal government’s position on slavery and corrected the oversights made in the original Constitution. The 13th was ratified by the legislatures of twenty-seven of the then thirty-six states within a year of its proposal. While the 13th Amendment had been passed in December 1865 it was largely ignored by many in the south.

In 1903 the reformist administration of Teddy Roosevelt attacked the new form of slavery using an 1867 law that forbid peonage rather than the hated 13th Amendment. In a split decision the peonage statute had been upheld by the Supreme Court. Federal prosecutors were directed to frame their charges against neo-slavers in terms of this statute. However active prosecutions of southern landowners and factory owners were not actively pursued. The practice of debtor servitude was continued in the American South until the outbreak of World War Two.

The “separate but equal” doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 did not fall until Brown v. Board in 1954. Brown v. Board in fact became the pivotal decision that compelled abandonment of the Montgomery Alabama City public transit system’s segregation in 1956. The winds of change were beginning to blow even in Montgomery Alabama the last bastion of segregation. These efforts culminated with the civil rights act of 1964.

America is not a land of fools and bigots. We are slow to change as are many human beings. Change is always unsettling. All people seek the comfort of things known and things familiar. Where change must occur is when one group deprives a second group of their rights of citizenship. In such cases the duty of the government is to restore those rights.

I think the best summary of this work was proposed by the author himself:

“Let us define this period (1865 until 1945) of American life plainly and comprehensively. It was the Age of Neoslavery. Only by acknowledging the full extent of slavery’s grip on U.S. society – its intimate connections to present-day wealth and power, and the depth of it injury to millions of Black Americans, the shocking nearness in time of its true end – can we reconcile the paradoxes of current day American life.

I personally have thought that slavery was a black mark on American history. I too thought much of this was in the distant past of my country. What a personal shock to realize that I was alive while Neoslavery continued. I will not sleep well for many, many nights.