04.10.08
Slavery by Another Name
Currently reading:
What Emancipation Didn’t Stop After All
SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME
The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War II
By Douglas A. Blackmon
Illustrated. 468 pages. Doubleday. $29.95.
In “Slavery by Another Name” Douglas A. Blackmon eviscerates one of our schoolchildren’s most basic assumptions: that slavery in America ended with the Civil War. Mr. Blackmon unearths shocking evidence that the practice persisted well into the 20th century. And he is not simply referring to the virtual bondage of black sharecroppers unable to extricate themselves economically from farming.