With the end of slavery, in which owners exploited laborers by owning their persons, employers commanded labor by controlling access to the means of labor, subsistence, and livelihood. The power of controlling such access takes many forms, and those seeking access understand full well the protean quality of the force that blocks them, as well as the complicated rituals through which they must dramatize their own subjection. Education could be a militant act in and of itself, on the part of both teacher and student.
