Mr. Book just finished Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement Of Black Americans From The Civil War To World War II, by Douglas Blackmon.
This is an excellent and eye-opening book about how the southern states essentially reestablished slavery after the 13th Amendment purported to end it. The most popular of those methods was by using the loophole contained in the amendment that permitted slavery as punishment for crimes. Convict leashing became an extremely lucrative business. It was far cheaper for companies to just buy themselves workers than to have to actually pay them. They were then free to treat them as slaves, complete with punishments like whipping them. This lead to high rates of death, while disease also spread within the convict ranks. Among common causes of death, just from one page of the registry of one slave mill were “yellow fever; abscess lower jaw; shot in neck; shot in shoulder and finger; right eye out; skull fractured.”
And, as far as the “crimes” committed, most were trumped up charges or laws targeting and only enforced against black or even incurring debts. There were eventually some prosecutions, which the book covered. But, they were just the tip of iceberg. And, the Supreme Court overturned convictions for the slave purchasers.
One of the great things about history books is the little tidbits of gems that they always contain. One that stands out from this book is, right after the Civil War, “Deserters, who had been far more numerous than southern mythology acknowledged, began settling old scores. The increasing lawlessness of the postwar years was, rather than a wave of crime by freed slaves as so often claimed, largely perpetrated against whites by other whites.”
I give this book an A+ and inducted it into the Hall of Fame. Goodreads requires grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A+ equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).
This review has been posted at my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews, and Goodreads.
Mr. Book finished reading this on August 29, 2024.
