Slavery by Another Name reveals the sad reality that, contrary to popular belief about the abolition of slavery, African Americans were still subjected to forced labor without compensation after the Civil War, despite passing the 13th Amendment. Instead of freedom, they faced even worse animosity in the South and were the target of racially motivated legislation that kept them marginalized until World War II. The criminal justice systems of eight Southern states financed themselves by arresting black men for vagrancy and other crimes that applied only to African Americans, assessing them a fine they could not pay, and then selling their labor to companies that paid the fine. and put the defendants to work in coal mines, quarries, and other places where conditions were harsh, disease was rampant, and mortality rates were high. Guarded by leaders who used whips, “they were slaves in all but name.” Blackmon, who works for the Wall Street Journal, wanted to know what might be revealed if American companies like U.S. Steel were examined through the same lens of historical accountability as that applied to German companies that relied on slave labor during World War II World. We'll talk about it later. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay This 400+ page book reflects impressive research. Blackmon found a vast documentation of original documents describing the arrest, sale, and rendition of tens of thousands of African Americans in mines, lumberyards, quarries, farms, and factories. The victims were typically guilty of indigence and had received a cruel travesty of due process. “The sentences were issued by provincial judges, local mayors and justices of the peace who were often men in the employ of white entrepreneurs who relied on the forced labor produced by the sentences. A world had re-emerged in which the kidnapping and selling of a black man – even a black child – was considered neither criminal nor extraordinary.” States discovered a source of steady revenue from selling or leasing convicts to corporations. By the end of Reconstruction in 1877, all of the former Confederate states except Virginia had adopted the practice of leasing black prisoners into commercial hands. But the county's prisoners soon far outnumbered the number of men forced into hard labor by the state. The number of arrests occurred not in response to the crime rate, but to the demand for forced labor. “It was increasingly a system driven not by any objective of public protection against serious crime, but purely to generate fees and demand rewards.” Societies had the power to punish prisoners without effective checks and balances. Conditions were brutal: Nearly 20 percent of prisoners rented in Alabama died in the first two years, with a mortality rate of 35 percent in the third year and 45 percent in the fourth. Before the Civil War, the slave owner who rented his property had an interest in how the slave was treated. After the war, the sheriff was not interested in their treatment or their survival. Alongside convict leasing, another system developed whereby debtors agreed to work for a white farmer without compensation. The black debtors accepted this agreement because they preferred to be convicted and sentenced to hard labor in a mine. The result was that black tenant farmers and sharecroppers often returned as convict laborers without compensation, subject tochains and whippings, in the same fields they and their ancestors had worked during slavery. In short, this new system served not only as a source of revenue but also to control and intimidate freedmen into complying with a social order of white domination in counties where African Americans were the majority. Incredibly, the power structure tried to justify this cruel system by blaming the victims, claiming that the freedmen's illegal behavior required severe measures. State of Alabama inspectors sent to labor camps in the 1870s always reported that inmates were treated humanely. W. D. Lee, an inspector of convicts from Alabama, gave a speech to the National Prison Congress in Cincinnati in 1890 in which he defended conditions in the mines, calling all criticisms "exaggerated" and "false." He claimed that the inmates actually enjoyed better health! “I hereby affirm, without fear of contradiction, that Negro prisoners…have better quarters, are better fed, better clothed, and receive better medical care and treatment in case of illness than the majority of the same class, as freemen, in their own country . houses." The whites were indifferent. Reconstruction ended in 1877, and the Chicago Tribune expressed a common view: “The long controversy over the black man seems to have come to a conclusion.” Meanwhile, the SCOTUS emasculated civil rights laws, Jim Crow laws requiring segregation were gradually adopted, funding for black schools was cut, and 1892 was the peak year for lynchings in the United States with 250. By 1900, the right to vote had all but disappeared. for African Americans. Federal authorities during this period turned a blind eye to the shocking violation of basic human rights. The exception occurred during several years of Theodore Roosevelt's administration, when a local U.S. attorney in Alabama was granted permission to intervene. Although a handful of business owners have been convicted, they have paid fines and none have gone to prison. It was only with the United States' entry into World War II that the United States Department of Justice once again showed interest in the mistreatment of African Americans. FDR recognized that the mistreatment of African Americans would be used against the United States by our enemies to demonstrate that we did not practice the ideals of democracy we preached. He asked Attorney General Francis Biddle to issue a directive – five days after the attack on Pearl Harbor – urging U.S. attorneys to reverse their long inertia in prosecuting slavery. The persistent persistence of slavery has been largely ignored by history; it conflicts with “the mythology that most white Americans rely on to explain our past and embroider our present.” There is reluctance on the part of most companies and families to reopen the details of how they profited from racial practices in the early 20th century. Those who have inherited wealth at the expense of others are not eager to acknowledge how they have benefited from the crimes of their ancestors. The notion of compensation is rejected a priori. This country's business sectors, Blackmon writes, have never been held responsible for profiting from the resurgence of forced labor after the Civil War. Should they have obligations to the descendants of slave victims who performed the work without compensation? Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a custom essay Blackmon proposes that the era he studied be renamed : Instead of the era.