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Aug 12, 2011

C added it

Hendrix College alumni Douglas Blackmon's 2009 Pulitzer Prize winning account of how the United States government allowed the re-enslavement of African Americans after Reconstruction.

This re-enclavement was accomplished by incarceration of African Americans for petty or non-existent crimes and then the convicts sold to work for industry that, in turn, paid the goverment for the convicts service ranks as a genocide equal to that of the slaughter of Native Americans in the name of "Manifest More...

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Jan 12, 2009

Jeffrey rated it:

I will admit that I was a bit hesitant at first with this book. It seems there has been quite a few books come to my desk that are a bit brutal about the South in particular and the US in general. I was half expecting this to be another of the countless books that wish to heap blame on the south and want to further stir racial resentments for the author’s economic gain. I am so pleased to say that I did not find that to be the case with this book. Rather, I found a very interesting story that n More...

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Jan 14, 2012

Martin rated it:

I would buy this book for anyone who is marginally interested in this subject. This is an incredibly important and largely unexamined piece of American history. I believe the atrocities of the post-Reconstruction era shape American life much more than antebellum slavery. It is very well written, both in the author's prosaic style and in his exhaustive research. One of the frustrations in scholarship on 19th century African American life is the dearth of written documentation on the lives of More...

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Jun 25, 2011

Ilya rated it:

In 1908, an unemployed 22-year-old black man walked to a train station in central Alabama, possibly to find a day's labor. He was suddenly arrested by a deputy sheriff, and thrown into jail. Three days later, he was charged with riding a freight train without a ticket. He denied the charge. He was then charged with vagrancy, an ill-specified offense usually applied to blacks, swiftly convicted, and sentenced to 30 days of hard labor and large fines. He could not afford the fines. The judge repla More...

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Apr 14, 2010

Chrishna rated it:

In this exhaustively researched, footnoted and detailed book Mr. Blackmon explains the origin of chain gangs and slavery-type work contracts that came into being shortly after emancipation and persisted until the 1950s! I was reading this while I read The Help and it provided a backdrop for how the South could have remained so segregated for so long. Black workers were arrested on spurious charges, convicted in "courts" held outside of taverns and sentenced to outrageous fines and fe More...

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Jan 02, 2010

Walt rated it:

Don't read this book.

I say that in the vein of Br'er Rabbit's, "Don't throw me in that briar patch."

Exploitation of the downtrodden by some rich and powerful people and corporations is nothing new here in America or elsewhere in the world, and it seems to never vanish. It is an old relic of evolution --- you know, survival of the fittest and all that crap. And it continues well after evolution has passed beyond the notion of just picking on the poor and the meek More...

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Aug 23, 2009

Jesse rated it:

Astonishing, and embarrassing to me that it is astonishing to me. I knew about Jim Crow and the destruction of Reconstruction (am assigning Budiansky's The Bloody Shirt, about the vicious Southern campaign to destroy any semblance of progress, which started about three minutes after the Civil War ended), but nothing about this whole Southern edifice of compelled labor (ie slavery) that cropped up around the turn of the century and lasted until WWII. Local courts complied, law enforcement raked i More...

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Dec 27, 2011

Keren rated it:

This book was an atrocious account, but an an incredible read, recounting the indentured servitude of blacks in the South after Civil War. The book opens describing the life of Green Cottingham and his indentured service in a mine in 1908. Blackmon uses the history of the Cottingham family and their various ancestors and descendants to paint the main picture of life in the South. This covers the historical period from the Civil War up through World War II. Around this time, the lawless practice More...

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Aug 12, 2011

Hayfa rated it:

يقول المفكر والعلامة السوري عبد الرحمن الكواكبي في كتابة طبائع الاستبداد: ''الاستبداد لو كان رجلا وأراد أن يحتسب وينتسب لقال: أنا الشرّ وأبي الظلم وأمّي الإساءة وأخي الغدر، وأختي المسكنة، وعمي الضرّ، وخالي الذل وابني الفقر وبنتي البطالة وعشيرتي الجهالة، ووطني الخراب، أما ديني وشرفي فالمال.. المال.. المال''.

في عام 2009 حصل الكاتب الأمريكي دوجلاس بلاكمون على جائزة بوليتزر الشهيرة عن كتابة ''Slavery by Another Name - العبودية باسم جديد'' هذا الكتاب الذي ولد في مقال نشر في ''وول ستريت جورن More...

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Dec 04, 2010

Patrick rated it:

Slavery by Another Name is the rare example of regional history with sufficient appeal to attract a general, national audience. Regional histories often suffer from tunnel vision. Douglas A. Blackmon is the uncommon historian capable of correlating regional history and its national context. By defining the "era of Neoslavery" (Blackmon's proposed replacement for the term most Americans use: "Jim Crow") as existing between 1877 and 1945, the author expands his work's purpos More...

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Nov 24, 2011

Stephen rated it:

Remarkable book. I picked it up based upon the recommendation of a friend, not knowing what it would say, and expecting it to be just a polemic.

It is not. It is mostly a quiet narrative about the experience of American citizens from 1865 - 1960. There is more emphasis upon the experience in Alabama because the author focuses on one family and its descendants, but there are examples spread broadly throughout the South.

It shouldn't be seen as a "slam upon the South" More...

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Mar 06, 2011

Wilson rated it:

Can you imagine the year being 1908 and there being an actual court condoned and operated slave trade in the United States of America? That is exactly what Mr. Blackmon brings to light and it wasn't only a localized problem, it was all over the South.
This is a book which I cannot describe, but only recommend. I was disheartened, embarrassed, but relieved to know this era in our history was finally put to rest by some great men like Booker T. Washington, W.B. Dubois, President Roosevelt More...

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Nov 29, 2011

Shirley rated it:

This is a profound and very well researched book. It documents a chapter in American history that is very little known and that many people do not care to face. After you have read this book, full of documented court proceedings and historical records; you will come to the full realization that what they didn't teach you in school, is that slavery did not end with the civil war. Slavery started to come to a halt with the advent of World War II. The atrocities committed in America by American More...

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Aug 09, 2011

H rated it:

The author present an impressive array of facts, anecdotes, and documentation to make a case of the Age of Neoslavery. In fact this impressive collection occasional lacks a narrative structure making it difficult to follow. He states that he will focus on one family's experience but he actually focuses on several counties in Alabama's black belt. A map of the area would help orient the reader.

In the introduction, he points toward an explanation for the present difficulties that African America More...

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Jun 29, 2010

Elaine rated it:

The author makes a pretty good case that slavery in the southern US didn't really end until WWII...in lots of gruesome detail about the laws and practices that came into place as Reconstruction fell apart. In short, the practice of fines being paid through labor, followed by the chain gang, in which white sheriffs and judges convicted (mostly) men on tiny/ludicrous charges, then made money by essentially selling them to plantation and mine owners.

He even makes the argument that post More...

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May 03, 2009

Eve rated it:

The author describes how slavery continued up until WWII. In short, authorities would arrest people on bogus charges or on charges that were only on the books to be enforced against black people. Vagrancy, etc. The convict would then be leased out by prison officials, or would have his (bogus) debts paid for by a private person, who then would be entitled to the convict's labor for some period of time. At the end of that time, the convict -- if he was even still alive after working in horrib More...

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Aug 24, 2011

Jim rated it:

All Americans should make themselves aware of the re-enslavement of African Americans after the Civil War. This book describes the horrific practices of penal slavery that was its most horrific manifestation and how it blended seemlessly with debt peonage. It clearly shows the broad communal support in the South for these practices and all of America's willingness to stand by idly while hundreds of thousands of men were re-enslaved between the 1870s and 1940. As good as this book is, I found More...

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Aug 08, 2011

Nancy rated it:

I had no idea what happened after "emancipation" for the black people. This book opened my eyes to

a terrible part of our national history. A lot of blacks were better off under slavery because at least their

owners paid and cared a little about their "investment." It's no wonder blacks never had a chance to

thrive on their own. It was very shameful to read how we treated these people. It wasn't pleasant to

read about the brutality they endured but I can't imagine having to s More...

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Nov 05, 2009

Grace rated it:

Although I felt that 100-150 pages could've been shaved off of this book, I nonetheless feel that it's an extremely important addition to the canon of reconstruction era literature. It deals with a topic that is not only not widely recognized but also actively ignored by our collective American consciousness. The author explicitly states that the reason for his undertaking is to actively combat our national ignorance, and I applaud him in that regard. Thought it's a story that for those of us fa More...

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Apr 22, 2008

Sandra D rated it:

This book was a little too long, a bit slow in spots, occasionally repetitive, and there were even a couple of typos -- and I'm still giving it five stars. It was that amazing.

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Jul 24, 2009

Kelly rated it:

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 cons More...

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Jan 17, 2012

Kathy rated it:

Slavery By Another Name covers the time between the Civil War and WWII discussing and investigating the practice of slavery through the structure of immoral local officials who charged African Americans with fabricated crimes and then hawked them as labor to company mines & farms. It's a fastidiously examined work and well worthy of its Pulitzer Prize. Some of the parts of this book are monotonous but needed. Especially interesting is the effort to convict African Americans in 1903, and how the More...

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Aug 14, 2010

Stanley's Mom rated it:

This book tells in chilling, almost-unbearable-to-consider detail the exploitation, brutality and inhumanity that loomed over every black person (and some poor whites) in the south for almost 100 years after the Civil War.

Fortunately the author names the white SOBs most of them moneyed or in "law enforcement" or the court system who were responsible for the kidnappings and wrongful imprisonment which subjected captives to slave labor and such sub-human treatment that all More...

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Oct 13, 2011

Mark rated it:

Douglas Blackmon won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for a series of WSJ articles (expanded into this book) recounting how countless thousands of African Americans were brutally re-enslaved under a system euphemistically called "peonage." This was unrelated to sharecropping - young black men were essentially kidnapped under color of law, then "convicted" on trumped-up or even fictional charges. From there they were forced to "pay off" their fines by laboring for years in i More...

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Jun 24, 2009

Sam rated it:

This book is a horrific eye-opener about the peonage system that existed throughout the Southern USA after Reconstruction. It covers the essential re-enslavement of Black Americans into forced labor that continued until World War II. It is an important myth-busting tale that belies out delusion that slavery ceased to exist with the Emancipation Proclamation and the 14 & 15th Amendments to the Constitutions. It may be a bit overly detailed but that seems necessary to prove these allegations beyon More...

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May 19, 2010

Gary rated it:

Slavery by Another Name is a wrenching account of the convict labor system put in place in the South after the Civil War, which reached its peak in the early twentieth century. Black men were arrested on the most flimsy of charges and then basically sold to work in the coal mines, turpentine camps, brick yards, and farms of the South where they were ill-fed and -clothed, beaten, and frequently murdered. Blackmon has written a graphic account of a previously largely unrecognized aspect of our h More...

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Jun 05, 2009

Julie marked it as to-read

I had not heard of this book until I listened to a podcast (OnPoint with Tom Ashbrook) interview between Tom Ashbrook and the author, Douglas Blackmon. This book just won the Pulitzer Prize in non fiction (2009).

The interview was fascinating and I find the subject matter very interesting. I think this is an important book and will make a point to read it this year.

See Slavery by Another Name for more information. More...

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Apr 11, 2008

Tom & Beverly marked it as to-read

Bill Perry says it is a "must read"

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Oct 23, 2009

Courtney rated it:

Wow. This book is proof that if you want truth you have to be a seeker. There is so much that has been lost in the shame of our nation's past and entangled in modern myths.

The truth that Blackmon uncovers about post-emancipation, American industrial slave complex's domination over Southern economy and national morality will force a revision of the history you have always known as truth.
As a former Atlanta resident it was moving to learn the historical significance behind th More...

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Sep 13, 2011

Eric J rated it:

As this book is a few years old now there is not much I can say about it that has not already been said in previous reviews. The book's author has been criticized in few Amazon reviews for adding a bit too much speculative flair to some of the personal experiences recounted in the book, which may be true, but any journalist or historian who chooses to write history in the narrative style with an emphasis on character is obliged to add some fictionalized elements to some of the scenes. Personally More...

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