In researching the origin of the wording in the 13th Amendment, I was totally frustrated by the silence on the issue in what is called Black History; so I moved over to Civil War history; same silence. Eventually I realized that the meat and potatoes history of the African American experience with this country is hidden in the law and the American penal system. The old surveys of slave ships, and plantation life, though important and of course an integral part of this experience, is only the very tip of the iceberg. And while the sociologists cut their teeth on formulating theories touting Black inferiority , for the masses, the law was busy creating a framework that continues to entrap African Americans to this day, in forms of slavery that are constantly tweaked for mass consumption. In addition to, Esposito and Woods excellent book, Prison Slavery, Twice the Work Of Free Labor, point blank, reveals the monstrous duplicity of the 13th Amendment. You can read book after book, about slavery, the Civil War and Jim Crow and nobody will point out the elephant in the room, the Emperor wearing no clothes, the obvious. The first sentence frees, while the second sentence re-enslaves under conditions that were put in place through American law, and still exist to this day. People take it for granted it makes sense that there is an "exception" there. When nothing could be further from the truth. Senator Charles Sumner saw it before it was ratified and Congressman John Adam Kasson saw it two years after ratification. Lichtenstein does an admirable job of exposing the underbelly of the American experiment, gone rogue on an unsuspecting and vulnerable people.
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