Monday Moanin’: Your high school history teacher got it all wrong

By Jeff Salisbury

https://misterjournalism.wordpress.com/

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of its bloody civil war. The proclamation declared “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.” What if they weren’t? What if for the next 80 years, or more, slavery, by another name, still existed? What if your high school history teacher got it all wrong?

I love history. Always have. In large part I owe that to being fortunate enough to have a terrific American and World History teacher in high school – Charles Badura – World War hero – twice a POW – though he never talked about his experiences. First year I taught full-time was at Lansing Catholic Central and as luck (or not) would have it, I was told I’d be teaching a world history course. I managed to stay a chapter or two ahead of the students.

But I digress. Back to the book I am reading. I always appreciate learning something new about history or perhaps a slightly different take or point of view. But this interview took me down a path I never expected.

My wife Penny bought me an Amazon.com gift certificate for my birthday the past November and I used it to purchase a Kindle Fire. For several years I’ve had a Kindle app on my laptop but never really used it. Oh, I ordered and downloaded books from Amazon but most I just never got around to reading. Likely the ones I did I can review here another time.

Turns out I love the Kindle. Best gift Penny ever helped me give to myself.

There’s this one book I’m reading now though I want to tell you about: “Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues” –  It is a series of interviews – transcripts actually- from Moyers PBS series – a number of which Penny and I watched on our local public broadcasting channel.

Fascinating people and interviews – each its own chapter – Jon Stewart on politics and media to Michael Pollan on food, “The Wire” creator David Simon on the mean streets of our cities, James Cone and Shelby Steele on race in the age of Obama, Robert Bly and Nikki Giovanni on the power of poetry, Barbara Ehrenreich on the hard times of working Americans, and Karen Armstrong on faith and compassion – and one of the most remarkable “chapters” was an interview with reporter/author Douglas Blackmon.

Here’s summaries of the Moyer’s Interview with Blackmon; a summary of Blackmon’s book and finally the documentary.

It’s not an exaggeration to say I was amazed what I thought I knew about slavery, the Civil War, the Reconstruction, the Southern version of the Industrial Revolution and even the first half of the 20^th century and the modern Civil Rights Movement.

After watching and reading and watching… boy oh boy, I got almost all of it all wrong.

Watch the Interview –
Bill Moyers interviews Douglas Blackmon, the Atlanta bureau chief of the WALL STREET JOURNAL, about his latest book, SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME, which looks at an “age of neoslavery” that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II.

Link: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06202008/watch2.html

Watch the Documentary –

Slavery by Another Name “resets” our national clock with a singular astonishing fact: Slavery in America didn’t end 150 years ago, with Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. Based on Douglas A. Blackmon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, the film illuminates how in the years following the Civil War, insidious new forms of forced labor emerged in the American South, persisting until the onset of World War II.
The film, shot on location in both Birmingham and Atlanta, is built on Blackmon’s extensive research, as well as interviews with scholars and experts about this historic period.  It also incorporates interviews with people living today, including several African American “descendants” of victims of forced labor who discovered their connection to this history after reading Blackmon’s book.

Link: http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/watch/

Read the Book –

Slavery by Another Name:

The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II

In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history—when a cynical new form of slavery was resurrected from the ashes of the Civil War and re-imposed on hundreds of thousands of African-Americans until the dawn of World War II.

Under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests. With no means to pay these ostensible “debts,” prisoners were sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries and farm plantations. Thousands of other African Americans were simply seized by southern landowners and compelled into years of involuntary servitude. Government officials leased falsely imprisoned blacks to small-town entrepreneurs, provincial farmers, and dozens of corporations—including U.S. Steel Corp.—looking for cheap and abundant labor. Armies of “free” black men labored without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced through beatings and physical torture to do the bidding of white masters for decades after the official abolition of American slavery.

The neoslavery system exploited legal loopholes and federal policies which discouraged prosecution of whites for continuing to hold black workers against their will. As it poured millions of dollars into southern government treasuries, the new slavery also became a key instrument in the terrorization of African Americans seeking full participation in the U.S. political system.

Link: http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/the-book/

And finally, if you like a bit more information about Moyers’ book – here’s a link… http://billmoyers.com/books/

I hope you will join me in getting it right since it’s one step toward understanding how the whole country got it all so wrong and hopefully learning from the experience by watching and reading.

As the slogan on my blog says – “Read, Share, Discuss, Learn”