Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsMAN’S INHUMANITY TO MAN WAS NEVER CLEARER...
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2020
I was riveted by this book. It gives the reader an excellent historical overview of life in the South during and after reconstruction, and how Jim Crow laws came to govern the South. Race dominated everything. One can see how and why the the South supplanted slaves with sharecroppers. It really was just another form of slavery. Then came the chain gangs and the concept of convict leasing, which also supplied cheap labor. Florida and Mississippi were especially notorious in this respect.
Familiar themes of race, labor, economics, inequality, crime and punishment are the underpinnings of this book. All of it is overlaid with the white supremacy of the Jim Crow days. The injustices perpetrated are legion. Then, there was the notorious Parchman State penitentiary in Mississippi. The author meticulous lays out the operation of this penal institution, sparing no one.
This book is scrupulously researched and beautifully written. It is accompanied by archival photos that give the reader an authenticity of time and place. At the same time, it shows the horror of the Jim Crow South. The lengths gone to keep black people subjugated in the South were extraordinary and evil. It is astounding that some of those attitudes still permeate society today and not just in the South. This is a book that anyone interested in criminal justice, as well as race relations, should read.
