Slavery by Another Name premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2012. In 2012, it was adapted into a documentary film of the same name for PBS. based on peonage,force slavery,and reconstruction. The owners preferred to temporarily lease the slaves from them rather than purchase them as property because they could then send a worker back home if he didn’t perform well at his job. Start studying Slavery by another name. Blackmon structures his narrative around a young African-American man named Green Cottenham; though the records of Cottenham's life are incomplete, Blackmon says that "the absence of his voice rests at the center of this book. 4 millions slaves. They described it as "an attempt to incite violence based on race, religion, sex, creed or nationality". Executive in Charge of Production Gerry Richman. [24] The film was executive produced by Catherine Allan of Twin Cities Public Television, co-executive produced by Blackmon, directed by Sam Pollard, written by Sheila Curran Bernard, and narrated by Laurence Fishburne. Quiz on slavery by another name 1.According to the documentary Slavery By Another Name, after the end of slavery African Americans were not free yet. "There's no evidence that that ever happened. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II By Douglas A. Blackmon Under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, … This book won him a Pulitzer Prize. The author and narrator of Up From Slavery. In another aside, she says that Trefry never even had the chance to begin telling this story. 2. Questions? 4 millions slaves. Interviews with the descendants of victims and perpetrators resonate with a modern audience. Blackmon (born 1964) grew up in the Mississippi Delta. It was a shocking reality that often went unacknowledged, then and now: A huge system of forced, unpaid labor, mostly affecting Southern black men, that lasted until World War II. For those who think the conversation about race or exploitation in America is over, they should read Douglas Blackmon’s cautionary tale, Slavery by Another Name. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II is a book by American writer Douglas A. Blackmon, published by Anchor Books in 2008. Blacks were often unable to pay even small fees and were sentenced to labor as a result; convicts were leased to plantations, lumber camps, and mines to be used for forced labor. > Quiz on slavery by another name 1.According to the documentary Slavery By Another Name, after the end of slavery African Americans were not free yet. "[8] Cottenham, who was born in the 1880s to two former slaves, was arrested in 1908 for vagrancy, a common pretext to detain blacks who did not have a white patron. "[20], Slavery by Another Name was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. According to the documentary how many slaves were set free at the end of the Civil War? The documentary Slavery by Another Name reveals an astonishing fact that slavery in America went on until World War II even with the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863.Based on Douglas A. Blackmon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book titled Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black … One of his reasons for writing Up From Slavery is to showcase his achievements and to communicate his philosophy of racial uplift. The story generated a large response, and was later anthologized in Best Business Stories. Explore Slavery By Another Name in the Classroom, Read W. Fitzhugh Brundage's Essay on Slavery by Another Name, - Equality Under the Law The crime waves that occurred by and large were the aftermath of the war and whites coming back from fighting in the Civil War and settling scores with people and all sorts of renegade activity that didn't involve black people at all, but they were blamed for it, and that was then used as a kind of ruse for why these incredibly brutal new legal measures then began to be put in place. 4.9 … [25] The film is streaming free online, in English and with Haitian-Creole, Portuguese, and Spanish subtitles. About half were enforced in the convict leasing system. It is probably second in line to The Rape of Nanking by the late Iris Chang, about Japanese atrocities in 1937 during its invasion and occupation of that city. Northern attention was focused on immigration and World War I. ...as I began to research, even I, as someone who had been paying attention to some of these sorts of things for a long time and was open to alternative explanations, even I was fairly astonished when I put it together, basically by going county by county and finding the criminal arrest records and the jail records in county after county after county from this period of time and seeing that if there had been crime waves, there had to have been records of crimes and people being arrested for crimes. [22] Melvin filed a lawsuit stating that his First Amendment rights had been violated. "[16], W. Fitzhugh Brundage wrote in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education that, Blackmon deserves high praise for this deeply moving and troubling history. Resistance to Civil Government, called Civil Disobedience for short, is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. Based on the Pulitzer-Prize-winning book by Douglas Blackmon, Slavery By Another Name tells the stories of men, charged with crimes like vagrancy, and often guilty of nothing, who were bought and sold, abused, and subject to sometimes deadly working conditions as unpaid convict labor. Throughout the book, The Origins of Slavery, the author, Betty Woods, depicts how religion and race along with social, economic, and political factors were the key factors in determining the exact timing that the colonist’s labor bases of indentured Europeans would change to involuntary West African servitude. It was primarily imposed on African American men in the South and lasted until World War II. [13], The book was a New York Times Best Seller[14] and was praised by critics. This book gives in to a lot of deep thinking. In 2003, Blackmon wrote a story on the use of black convict labor in the coal mines of U.S. Steel. "[28], The film was one of four projects (together with The Abolitionists, The Loving Story[29] and Freedom Riders) included in "Created Equal: America's Civil Rights Struggle"—a nationwide community engagement initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History, designed to reach 500 communities between September 2013 and extended from December 2016 to December 2018. A 20-minute classroom version with curriculum materials is also available. [11] Joseph E. Brown, former governor of Georgia, amassed great wealth based on his use of convict labor in his Dade Coal Company mines and other enterprises, from 1874 to 1894. In 2009, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. Doubleday. Sites like SparkNotes with a Slavery by Another Name study guide or cliff notes. He grew up in Washington County, Mississippi, where as a seventh grader he was encouraged by his teacher and his mother to research a local racist incident, despite the opposition of some citizens. This groundbreaking historical expose unearths the lost stories of enslaved persons and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude shortly thereafter in … Interviews with the descendants of victims and perpetrators resonate with a modern audience. By 1865, despite the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth Amendment, and the Confederate defeat in the Civil War, many former slaves did not in reality experience “a new birth of freedom.” The Republican-controlled Congress enacted the Fourteenth Amendment (enshrining birthright citizenship and equal protection of the law) in 1868 and the Fifteenth Amendment (guaranteeing the right to vote for all men regardless of race) in 1870. - The Strategy of Nonviolence. 3. Blackmon argues that slavery in the United Statesdid not end with the Civil War, … There's no harm in a dry history lesson, but Pollard may have hoped to achieve more than that. Anyone who thinks otherwise should indulge in reading it. It will challenge and change your understanding of what we were as Americans - and of what we are. 4 0 obj This encouraged tenants to work to produce the biggest harvest that they could, and ensured they would remain tied to the land and unlikely to leave for other opportunities. In fact, it's the opposite. The Power of the Individual: Slavery by Another Name From the start of the convict leasing system, African Americans and some whites attempted to expose the practice and to organize against it. It depicts the subjugation of Convict Leasing, Sharecropping and Peonage and tells the fate of the former but not of the latter two. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools. Local law enforcement officers cited regulations against vagrancy, loitering, or walking near railroads to arrest, incarcerate, and sentence African American men to work as forced convict laborers in factories, mines, and farms. PBS bases its Slavery by Another Name documentary on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by the same name. Slavery by Another Name is a 90-minute documentary that challenges one of Americans’ most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery in this country ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. Top Experts. [27], Kunbi Tinuoye, writing for the Griot, described the film as a "powerful documentary" that "challenges the widely held belief that the enslavement of African-Americans ended with President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Tom, the story’s hero, endures the harshest form of slavery with abuse that makes him more like Christ while confronting readers with the reality of slavery… Slavery by Another Name began as an article which Blackmon wrote for The Wall Street Journal detailing the use of black forced labor by U.S. Steel Corporation. In the book's epilogue, Blackmon argues for the importance of acknowledging this history of forced labor: [T]he evidence moldering in county courthouses and the National Archives compels us to confront this extinguished past, to recognize the terrible contours of the record, to teach our children the truth of a terror that pervaded much of American life, to celebrate its end, to lift any shame on those who could not evade it. Drawing public attention to some of the victims and perpetrators of this forced labor system, the film Slavery by Another Name presents a story that has been largely ignored in history books. This immense system of forced, unpaid labor was a shocking reality that has often gone unacknowledged. Blackmon argues that slavery in the United States did not end with the Civil War, but instead persisted well into the 20th century. Samantha. The convict lease system finally ended with the advent of World War II. The NEH Created Equal project uses the power of documentary films to encourage public conversations about the changing meanings of freedom and equality in America. He especially deserves praise for teasing out the largest implications of his research. A production of TPT National Productions in association with Two Dollars & A Dream, Inc. Co-Executive Producer Douglas A. Blackmon. This was used to make convicts slave labor in factories and mines. [22] Blackmon said of the officials' actions that "The idea that a book like mine is somehow incendiary or a call to violence is so absurd".[23]. Slavery by Another Name is one of the most difficult books I have read in my life. In regards to its historical context, the book was written by Harriet herself, using the name Linda Brent as an alias, as she did with all of the characters. Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that it "eviscerates a basic assumption: that slavery in America ended with the Civil War." It was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. [12], In the early 20th century, federal prosecutors such as Eugene Reese attempted to prosecute responsible parties under federal laws against debt bondage. [5], The resulting book, Slavery by Another Name, was published by Anchor Books in 2008.[6]. Slave tells the true story of Mende, who was captured in a raid on her Nuba village and sold into slavery in Sudan. Slavery by Another Name was adapted as a 90-minute documentary film, which premiered on PBS in February 2012. (Spotlight)", "After slavery, new system recreates old torments", "2009 Pulitzer Prizes for Letters, Drama and Music", "Alabama Inmate Sues to Read Southern History Book", "Channel Surfing: 'Slavery by Another Name, "Sundance Review: 'Slavery By Another Name, "Documentary explores 'slavery by another name, "Welcome to Created Equal | Created Equal", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slavery_by_Another_Name&oldid=1004347002, Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction-winning works, Pages containing links to subscription-only content, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 2 February 2021, at 04:33. Find a "Changing America" exhibit in your community. 13th Amendment Summary: The Prison of Slavery By the 1920s, civil rights groups and labor unions were demanding that the convict lease system be ended. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools. He aptly, and carefully, draws parallels between the corporate responsibility of companies that exploited slave labor in Nazi Germany and that of southerners who bought convict labor. In the book, “Slavery by Another Name”, author Douglas A. Blackmon explains how industrial mines in Alabama were supported by slave owners who sent their slaves to work there. Approximately, 800,000 blacks had fallen into incarceration due to the black codes and pig laws. National and presidential attention was focused on racial issues because of the need for national unity and mobilization of the military.[11]. Slavery by Another Name 2012-10-04 By turns moving, sobering and shocking, this unprecedented account reveals these stories, the companies that profited the most from neoslavery, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today. Convict leasing was basically just another name for slavery. In the introduction to Slavery by Another Name, Blackmon describes his experience as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal "asking a provocative question: What would be revealed if American corporations were examined through the same sharp lens of historical confrontation as the one then being trained on German corporations that relied on Jewish slave labor during World War II and the Swiss banks that robbed victims of the Holocaust of their fortunes? According to the broadest outlines of history, the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution formally abolished slavery in 1865, but the truth is far more complex. British anti-slavery was one of the most important reform movements of the 19th century. The award committee called it "a precise and eloquent work that examines a deliberate system of racial suppression and rescues a multitude of atrocities from virtual obscurity. Paying more attention to the considerable presence of involuntary servitude in African-American literature and intellectual history, reaching back to Charles Chesnutt and Paul Laurence Dunbar, would have helped". This book is not a call for financial reparations. What was this based on? She praised the book's evidence as "relentless and fascinating," although she thought that the conceit of reconstructing Cottenham's life gives the book "a shaky start". 0 likes. Start studying Slavery By Another Name Chapter 2 (COMPLETE). The state of Alabama rented Cottenham as a laborer to a coal mine owned by U.S. Steel Corporation, where he died. [30], disfranchisement after Reconstruction era, Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Created Equal: America's Civil Rights Struggle, "The Pulitzer Prizes: Ex-AJC reporter wins book award", "Douglas Blackmon on Slavery by Another Name", "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II", "Lingering racism; Books examine post-Civil War racism and the life of Marcus Garvey", "Civil War didn't end slavery. However, he concludes that "the book vividly and engagingly recalls the horror and sheer magnitude of such neo-slavery and reminds us how long after emancipation such practices persisted. In the New World, Oroonoko not only loses his freedom but also his African identity. The novel devotes large sections of dialogue to debates about slavery. The resulting book was well received by critics and became a New York Times Best Seller. Introduction. - The Power of the Individual [18] A review in the Rocky Mountain News stated of the book, "Displaying meticulous research, and personalizing the larger story through individual experiences, Blackmon's book opens the eyes and wrenches the gut. He was Boston: Beacon, 1970. But such efforts received little support nationally and none in the South, which had disenfranchised most blacks to exclude them from the political system. As of this writing (March 2012) he is the Atlanta Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal. The experience began a lifelong interest in the history of American race relations.[3]. Doubleday. Instead, I hope it is a formidable plea for a resurrection and fundamental reinterpretation of a tortured chapter in the collective American past. This book bears a different name, but it’s written with an equally powerful purpose. The PBS documentary Slavery by Another Name examines the perpetuation of slavery under the guise of the peonage system. Doubleday, 2008 . A national film Project by the National Endowment for the Humanities, http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/pbs-film/, Programming Resources & Curriculum Materials. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II is a book by American writer Douglas A. Blackmon, published by Anchor Books in 2008. About Slavery By Another Name. Like “too; the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in 1865 to formally abolish slavery, specifically permitted involuntary servitude” I cannot recommend it to you highly enough. "[7] His story describing corporate use of black forced labor in the post-Civil War South generated more response than any other piece he had written, and inspired him to pursue a book-length study of the subject (see Reconstruction Era). This debate between Tom and Cassy, two victims, stands as the most intense. The “sour sickness” that Babo speaks of is not entirely Cereno’s illness, but the institution of slavery that demands one exert his control over the entirety of another’s being. How did it end? Based on the Pulitzer-Prize-winning book by Douglas Blackmon, Slavery By Another Name tells the stories of men, charged with crimes like vagrancy, and often guilty of nothing, who were bought and sold, abused, and subject to sometimes deadly working conditions as unpaid convict labor. In our humble opinion “Slavery by Another Name” doesn’t focus on anti-white rhetoric, but on social justice. Overview. Neil Genzliger of The New York Times wrote of the film that "by filling in an overlooked part of black history, this sobering film enhances our understanding of why race issues have proved so intractable. Seeing the popular response to the article, he began conducting research for a more comprehensive exploration of the topic. "[21], In 2011, Mark Melvin, an inmate at the Kilby Correctional Facility, was banned from reading the book by Alabama Department of Corrections officials. But its history is not without ironies. [17], In the Sunday Gazette-Mail, Chris Vognar called the book "chilling, doggedly reported and researched". [4] Blackmon began to research the subject more widely, visiting various southern county courthouses to obtain records on arrest, conviction, and sentences. Slavery By Another Name The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War IIBy Douglas A. Blackmon468 pages. Christina Comer, who discovered how her family profited from the system, comments that “the story is important no matter how painful the reality is.”, For more information on this film, please visit: http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/pbs-film/. As financial incentives for the Southern states faded, political scandals and abuse outrages gained If the name Nelson Mandela doesn’t ring any bells, then you are not of this Planet. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of … It explores the forced labor of prisoners, overwhelmingly African American men, through the convict lease system used by states, local governments, white farmers, and corporations after the American Civil War until World War II in the southern United States. Also includes sites with a short overview, synopsis, book report, or summary of Douglas A. Blackmon’s Slavery by Another Name. It is at once provocative and thought-provoking, sobering and heart-rending. We found no such entries for this book title. Though slaves were formally emancipated by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution following the Civil War, after Reconstruction, white-dominated Southern state legislatures passed Black Codes, "an array of interlocking laws essentially intended to criminalize black life",[10] to restrict the economic independence of blacks and provide pretexts for jail terms. ― Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. Though Imoinda is also given a Christian name, the narrator always refers to her as “Imoinda,” rather than “Clemene,” once her true identity is revealed. Slavery by Another Name Author: Douglas A. Blackmon . Essay about Slavery by Another Name 1282 Words | 6 Pages. If you thought that slavery ended in 1865 - think again. However, the conditions were horrifying. Written by journalist Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II is a searing and thorough account of the “new” form of slavery that continues throughout much of the South in the decades after the Civil War. Slavery by another name documentary review Slavery by another name documentary review. Blackmon uses the fate of Green to discuss slavery on the industrial level. Verified expert. And in reality, it's just not there. 16 likes. Introduction Summary: “The Bricks We Stand On” Slavery by Another Name opens with a statement about the arrest of Green Cottenham on March 30, 1908 in Alabama for “vagrancy,” or being unable to prove he was employed. Douglas Blackmon is a Wall Street Journal reporter. "[26], Daniel Fienberg of Hitfix, viewing the film at Sundance, wrote, Slavery By Another Name is sturdy and well-researched stuff and it will play well when it airs on PBS next month and it should play well in the future in classrooms, but as a film festival entry, it isn't nearly confident enough in its artistry. Let’s assume that you’ve heard about his fight against the Apartheid and which granted him 27 Years in Prison. The peonage system represents one of the great failures of Reconstruction. Incidents in the Life of a Slave girl displayed the exploitations of slavery on women, particularly sexual abuse, and … [2] It explores the forced labor of prisoners, overwhelmingly African American men, through the convict lease system used by states, local governments, white farmers, and corporations after the American Civil War until World War II in the southern United States. "[19], African American Studies scholar James Smethurst was more critical, writing in The Boston Globe that "this catalogue of the nadir is one of the book's weaknesses, since it sometimes departs from its account of peonage without much transition. Washington, a serious and deeply ambitious man, is an influential educator and black leader in the late nineteenth century. [15] Leonard Pitts, a columnist for the Miami Herald, wrote that "Slavery by Another Name is an astonishing book. tags: history, racism. ― Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. As context, Blackmon describes the beginnings of "industrial slavery",[9] in which convict laborers were put to work in factories or mines rather than cotton fields. $29.95. However, states and communities across the South ignored these federal mandates by passing “black codes,” laws that served to essentially re-enslave African Americans.