Staff Book and Media Recommendations

Slavery by Another Name

Douglas A. Blackmon

Many of us hold a similar belief- that slavery ended with the Civil War. Slavery by Another Name blows that notion to smithereens. This Pulitzer Prize winning book, written by Douglas A. Blackmon, Atlanta Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal, will show you how slavery of African American men and women continued far into the 20th century.

The shocking truth as to what happened to many southern black Americans after 1865 begins and ends in the criminal justice system. Southern whites created civil laws that were strictly used to arrest black men and women. Some examples from the book: "an 1865 Mississippi statute required African American workers to enter into labor contacts with white farmers by January 1 of every year or risk arrest. Four other states legislated that African American could not legally be hired for work without a discharge paper from their previous employer- effectively preventing them from leaving the plantation of the white man they worked for. In the 1880s, Alabama, North Carolina, and Florida enacted laws making it a criminal act for a black man to change employers without permission.” (Blackmon, 53).

These men and women were then tried and convicted for these crimes, and given a fine. When they couldn’t pay their fine, a white man would step up and pay it for them, making them sign a contract to work off their debt in prison mines from which they rarely returned.

This book draws stark parallels between the historical treatment of black Americans by the criminal justice system and the deep mistrust of that very same system today. In the face of mass incarceration, it's not hard to see that there still may be some injustice in our prison system. 

Blackmon is a skilled author, and each charge of re-enslavement is documented at length. Blackmon outlines the distance we've come since such overtly racist legal proceedings happened every day, and impresses upon the reader how much ground we still have to cover. This was an excellent, and enlightening, read. ~ Emily Z. Brown

Reviewed April 2013