Although the scope at which private citizens and companies enslaved post-war Black Americans is new to me, it’s been well documented for years how much state governments reaped obscene profits from these laws through convict leasing. David Oshinsky notes in his book Worse Than Slavery that in 1918 Mississippi, whose prison population was 90% Black, extracted a profit $825,000 – about half the state’s education budget – from Parchman Prison Farm. Matthew Mancini shockingly notes in his convict leasing study, One Dies, Get Another that “[i]n 1898 Alabama obtained 73% of its total revenue of $378,120.48 from the hire of its convicts.”
It’s a shame so many Americans aren’t informed enough to acknowledge how radical our post-bellum apartheid was and the extreme degree to which Americans inflicted terrorism on fellow Americans during the first part of the 20th century. The reason for the disparities outlined by Obama are more complex and ugly than his speech acknowledges. The truth about post-bellum slavery needs to be taught in grade school and become as mainstream as Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, or else we’re going to be stuck in the same watered-down dialogue race dialogue that we participate here in 2008.
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Extras:
- Listen to an extended conversation with Blackmon on NPR’s Talk of the Nation.
- The New York Times reviewed the book praising it as “relentless and fascinating”.
- “Worse than Slavery” author David Oshinsky delivered a paper at Yale in 2004 on Forced Labor in the 19th Century South.
i’ve always known about wage slavery, but not about this. thx for posting – looks like i have some catching up to do.
The extended clip on the PBS site really is fantastic. Especially the Georgia prison photos by John Spivak.
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p>The scope of what went on was surprising to me. I knew that being Black was criminalized and that states profited from convict leasing, but I did not realize how much private citizens and industry participated in this.
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p>Also worth noting, children were enslaved. Oshinsky’s paper linked above states that 25% of Mississippi’s leased convicts were 18 or younger:
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When Goldwater, Reagan, and the rest of them decried the Federal government intervening in the South as a violation of “state’s rights.”
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p>No matter how brutally people were treated, Goldwater, Reagan and the rest saw no reason–not even basic human decency–for the Federal government to intervene.
It was wrong. People behaved badly. Let’s not do it again. End of story.
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p>We get it, tblade. Now please tell me: what exactly shall we do to undo the sins of the past? Please enlighten me.
As for your question, we can start by acknowledging and teaching the truth from this point out. We can start my not minimizing this untold chapter in US history and trivializing its legacy and effect on today’s society. We can engage the material critically with intellectual rigor and sensitivity.
I think most sane, logical, thoughtful people acknowledge, accept, and regret it. But beyond that, I don’t think there’s a lot we can do. If we could undo what happened, I’m sure we’d all choose to do so. Unfortunately, that’s not an option. Let’s agree to make sure it never happens again and move on. If we keep trying to punish the people who didn’t perpetrate the crime, we’re just going to move in the wrong direction.
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p>And by the way, I’m not defensive. I understand very well what happened, not only here, but–much worse–in Latin America. Again, unfortunately, it happened.
As in the last 12 years. “Slavery by Another Name” came out this year and the other two books I referenced are from the mid 90s.
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p>They don’t teach this in schools and you won’t find this in text books. If you think most people know this, you’re wrong. I did not know “thousands of other African Americans were simply seized by southern landowners and compelled into years of involuntary servitude” and “armies of ‘free’ black men labored without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced through beatings and physical torture to do the bidding of white masters for decades after the official abolition of American slavery” until I saw this Moyers piece. Even host Bill Moyers seemed surprised.
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p>I don’t think people know of Will Evans and that 25% of Mississippi’s slave prison labor population was under 19.
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p>Maybe you’re not defensive, but your tone implies that or perhaps combativeness. You say that you’re “not stupid” when I never said or implied that you were. I’d add that I’ve met plenty of people who minimize and trivialize – are even in denial about – post-Civil War horrors that Black Americans faced for almost 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. I hear plenty of people argue “Slavery ended in 1865; Black people need to just get over it”.
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p>Americans are quick to express disgust over the Nazi’s use of slave labor in the 30s and 40s, but the conditions described by Blackmon indicate similar behaviors were sanctioned by federal and state governments for the benefit of state treasuries and corporations like US Steel here in our country at roughly the same time. I don’t think people know this. If I posted this on a right-wing blog, I’d probably be accused of “revisionist history” or placed in with the “blame America first” crowd.
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p>I think the fact that this is new material to the likes of me and Laurel indicate that the history talked about in Blackmon’s book is anything but mainstream.
Of course I do not think that everyone is aware of every last detail of this issue–or any other for that matter. I’m simply saying that the crime that was visited upon black americans (and black central and south americans) is well known, and that all but the die-hard bigots would agree that it should not happen again. I think there are plenty of protections in place to ensure that. That’s all. I’m neither defensive nor combative about this. I’m just practical. I am still curious, though, about next steps. Once everyone is aware of the details of the issue, what now? I’m not being sarcastic, I really want to know what you think should happen next.
Once we stop debating the facts about the past we can have a useful dialogue about the legacies of this radical apartheid, about how we got to where we are today, and the role of race in American society. People will have a better understanding of exactly how important MLK and other civil rights leaders were to all America and American history. When Black Americans talk about distrust for government, law enforcement, and jurisprudence, others can listen with a sophisticated understanding and empathy instead of antipathy and mocking.
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p>You know, occasionally I hear about how Germans don’t talk about the Holocaust and it’s not covered in detail in public schools. I don’t know to what degree that is true, but Americans who hear this rumor often recoil with disdain that Germany would lie by omission to its people. The thought is that a society that could visit such horrors on 6 million Jews and 5 million other peoples have a responsibility to not sugar coat its past.
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p>I can’t correct the sins of Slavery or the institutional oppression, torture, slaughter, and genocidal actions perpetrated by post-Civil War America, but I can work to prevent the sin of lying by omission about this ghoulish past going forward.
I guess we travel in different circles (and before you say it, my circle is filled with diversity) because I wasn’t aware that the facts were still being debated or that there was antipathy and mocking of the victims’ feelings. Everyone I know is aware of and horrified by what happened, and frankly I’ve never heard one single person deny that it happened.
Learning about what evil our nation was capable of in the past isn’t only about reparations, it is so we can be better prepared to avoid similar tragedies in the future. And so that we can be appropriately humble before the world, rather than crowing endlessly about how “America is Number 1” and “the land of the free” and all about democracy. Those may be our common goals, but they are not our common history. They’re not even our common present. We must keep trying, and we must do better. Self-delusion in the form of ignoring the past won’t help us get there.
It shouldn’t be about reparations at all. Again, punishing the people who didn’t perpetrate the crime is a huge step in the wrong direction.
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p>What sane person would not acknowledge that this was all very wrong? What sane person would not agree that it should not happen again? If you’re still going after the die-hard, whackjob bigots, you’re on a fool’s journey.
who said anything about punishing anyone? not me, that’s for sure. there is no one left to punish, afaik.
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p>i mentioned reparations because i thought that was what you were referring to when you said
if i misunderstood you, my apologies. but if i did misunderstand you, what did you really mean?
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p>and what is wrong with my “cautionary tale for the future” point of view? can you not see the value in that?
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p>i am glad that tblade wrote this dairy, because it isn’t just about “going after the die-hard, whackjob bigots”, as you say. it’s about educating ignorant people like me. people like me who you might call die-hard whackjob equality proponents.
of making sure that everyone knows what happened. But who doesn’t at this point? Sane people will understand that it was awful and will ensure that it does not happen again. I think you took some poetic license assuming that I would call you a die-hard whack job equality proponent. I am such a proponent as well. And why do you call yourself ignorant? I’ve read many of your other posts. You do not seem ignorant at all, especially about the problems of inequality.
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p>But my question was nonetheless sincere: what exactly can be done to undo the sins of the past? The answer is nothing. We can learn, understand, and prevent. We simply cannot undo. The sooner we all accept that reality, the quicker we can move on.
i knew fragments of it, but i didn’t understand the depth and breadth of it. so when you ask “who doesn’t [know what happened] at this point”, i can say “probably lots of people like me”. and i like to think i’m one of the better informed people out there when it comes to civil rights. i’m the sort of person who reads the bible so that i know what’s in there, even though i don’t believe it. and yet i was unaware of this american history. just as many non-lgbt people are unaware of lgbt history and the current depth and breadth of anti-lgbt oppression. we all need to keep learning from each other.
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p>didn’t mean to put words in your mouth with the whackjob thing. i was actually joking around with that.
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p>can we undo the sins of the past? we’ll i certainly don’t have a time machine. but i do have the power to speak out today to try to redress the outfall of the past. what precisely that boils down to i have to address on a case by case basis. affirmative action? free college tuition for an entire generation of african americans? name your proposed remedy, and i’ll be happy to debate and perhaps support it.
But I guess I was wrong to assume that people are completely aware of what happened. I certainly am. As for what we can do, I agree that can probably address solutions on a case-by-case basis, but we must be extremely careful not to roll back progress by applying blanket solutions that inadvertently punish the people who did not perpetrate the crime. My mother always said “two wrongs don’t make a right.” In other words, let’s not address past discrimination with future discrimination.
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p>It’s a tricky issue to be sure.