Starred Review. W
all Street Journal bureau chief Blackmon gives a groundbreaking and disturbing account of a sordid chapter in American history—the lease (essentially the sale) of convicts to commercial interests between the end of the 19th century and well into the 20th. Usually, the criminal offense was loosely defined vagrancy or even changing employers without permission. The initial sentence was brutal enough; the actual penalty, reserved almost exclusively for black men, was a form of slavery in one of hundreds of forced labor camps operated by state and county governments, large corporations, small time entrepreneurs and provincial farmers. Into this history, Blackmon weaves the story of Green Cottenham, who was charged with riding a freight train without a ticket, in 1908 and was sentenced to three months of hard labor for Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad, a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. Cottenham's sentence was extended an additional three months and six days because he was unable to pay fines then leveraged on criminals. Blackmon's book reveals in devastating detail the legal and commercial forces that created this neoslavery along with deeply moving and totally appalling personal testimonies of survivors. Every incident in this book is true, he writes; one wishes it were not so.
(Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Advance Praise for SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME
“A powerful and eye-opening account of a crucial but unremembered chapter of American history. Blackmon’s magnificent research paints a devastating picture of the ugly and outrageous practices that kept tens of thousands of black Americans enslaved until the onset of World War II.
Slavery by Another Name is a passionate, highly impressive, and hugely important book.”
—David J. Garrow, author of
Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and winner of the 1987 Pulizer Prize for Biography
“This groundbreaking book illuminates black Americans’ lingering suspicions of the criminal justice system. The false imprisonment of black men has its history in an ignominious economic system that depended on coerced labor and didn’t flinch from savagery toward fellow human beings. Blackmon’s exhaustive reportage should put an end to the oft-repeated slander that black Americans tend toward lawlessness.”
—Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor of the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for commentary
“For those who think the conversation about race or exploitation in America is over, they should read Douglas Blackmon’s cautionary tale,
Slavery by Another Name. It is at once provocative and thought-provoking, sobering and heart-rending.”
—Jay Winik, author of
April 1865: The Month That Saved America and
The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World
“Douglas Blackmon’s
Slavery by Another Name is an American holocaust that dare not speak its name, a rivetingly written, terrifying history of six decades of racial degradation in the service of white supremacy and cheap labor. It should be required reading.”
—David Levering Lewis, professor, New York University, and winner of the 1994 and 2001 Pulitzer Prizes for Biography
“Doug Blackmon has exposed an awful truth about the continued abuse of power and continued post-slavery exploitation of the poor into the twentieth century.”
—Andrew Young, aide to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
“Urgent, definitive, powerful. The most important work of history published in a very long time.”
—Bill Cosby
“While much has been written about the horrors of slavery, Douglas Blackmon’s well researched and powerfully written book reminds us of the ugly period of racial subjugation in America
after the end of slavery. This book adds a missing chapter in America’s troubled history … and should be required reading in every classroom in America.”
—Charles J. Ogletree Jr., executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, and author of
All Deliberate Speed:Reflections on the First Half Century of Brown v. Board of Education“To read this book is to cross an intellectual Rubicon: Once opened, you will no longer find it possible to relegate slavery to the distant past. Once opened, this book will change you, and how you perceive race relations in America.”
—Harriet A. Washington author
of Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
“Each time you think you know all about black history comes another revelation. And few have come with as much stunning clarity as Douglas Blackmon’s
Slavery by Another Name. Blackmon’s astonishing research is delivered evenly and concisely.”
—Herb Boyd, author of
We Shall Overcome: The History of the Civil Rights Movement As It Happened“Douglas A. Blackmon unravels the backlash against Emancipation and Reconstruction and reveals the growth of an insidious system of morally corrupt legal wrangling and exploitation. Incisive research underscores a lucid narrative history that is at once eloquent and compelling.”
—Alan Govenar, author of
Untold Glory: African Americans in Pursuit of Freedom, Opportunity, and Achievement
