Comments on: Slavery by Another Name

By: Ebenum Dakey Diospyros

Ebenum Dakey Diospyros — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:02:04 +0000

Now listen once more, carefully to this man’s speech:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWynt87PaJ0&feature=related

Then listen to the truth from a black man:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SBFREiCkf8

And the u.s. continues to exploit others for cheap labour… witness the shameful practice of forcing hispanics to crawl under the fence to come on over to clean the Big House.

Oh ya! Leader of the free world!

By: Gustavo Brett

Gustavo Brett — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:59:47 +0000

As much as I know about our country’s darkside, this truth is all most too much to consider. The fact that I have never heard of this before is evidence of a country that basically is evil. That is so self centered, and abusive that this not only happened, but that we as a nation don’t know about it or recognize what it means to our us. I am white and I am heartbroken by our past and what we have done, and still do in the name of freedom. We are beyond redemption because we refuse to even acknowledge the basic truth of cultural genocide that we have par taken in since we (white europeans) arrived on this soil. We are beyond shame, beyond cowardice. I can not put into words how completely horrid we are as a culture. If God can bless us than, please do so. I am so very sorry for what we have done.

By: Ann

Ann — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:06:16 +0000

I forgot to say how terrific it is to hear from Mr. C’s class! Also, thanks to posters who sent in interesting links; there is LOTS to learn, and as we do, a more comprehensive picture of our past appears! Thanks all!

By: links for 2009-06-04 « Lasting Impression

links for 2009-06-04 « Lasting Impression — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:51:43 +0000

[...] Slavery by Another Name – On Point with Tom Ashbrook Americans think they know the sorry history of the post-Civil War South. Jim Crow laws hemming in African-Americans. Lynchings. Klansmen riding high. [...]

By: Ann

Ann — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 02:58:28 +0000

Gil Garcia,
Thanks for your link, above, which you kindly sent to REBUT my earlier point. Your link, AMAZINGLY enough, was to the 1911 book, “Ye KIngdome of Accawmacke, Or, The Eastern Shore of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century” by Jennings Cropper Wise! This is TRULY REMARKABLE TO ME because my grandfather’s African-American and possibly Gingaskin Native-American family is from the adjacent county, Northampton County, the southern-most county on Virginia’s Eastern Shore (some of our family may have wandered down from Accommack)!!

Your J.C. Wise book suggests that Thomas Savage may have been the first permanent white settler on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, after first arriving in Jamestown in 1607. By 1860, our mulatto family in Northampton Co. had living with them a 13-year-old black relative (probably a niece) whose last name is Savage and whose family’s owner’s full name is known to me. Had you not been trying to impress upon me your sense of the “victimization of white Southerners” (thank you Chris, above!), I might not have found this 1911 book to delve into in search of more information, prejudicial or otherwise, about one of our family’s various owner families!!! If YOU want to find out more about the history of the area from an historian who uses primary source materials to explore the lives of the Native Americans, mulattos and blacks of the region, including information about MY family (not because it is MY family, but because it is A family who existed in history), I suggest a book by historian and publisher Frances Bibbins Latimer, “The Journey of a Multiracial Family: Six Generations of the Eastern Shore Francis Family”, available online thru her Hickory House press.

I am aware of Anthony Johnson, a black slave owner from the Eastern Shore during Colonial times. You should be aware, however, that many blacks who owned slaves actually purchased their OWN relatives to keep them from being SOLD AWAY from their black FAMILY, or from having to LEAVE THE STATE due to laws where, once manumitted, a slave was REQUIRED to leave the state. To prevent this loss, some blacks who had managed to earn money and save it, bought their own relatives.

By: Arnold

Arnold — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 02:49:42 +0000

In our current post-racial society we must strive to deal with the slavery of low expectations exacted by others and the slavery of envy and materialism we exact on ourselves.

By: Walter Fox

Walter Fox — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 02:25:12 +0000

As an African American, I thought I generally knew about the treatment of some of my ancestors in the post civil war south. But the treatment of this gentleman, James Cottonham (I believe that was the name) that Mr. Blackmon narrated, was truly shocking. The sharecropping system was bad enough, but what he told about was even worse. I will try to get procure this book. Thank you Mr. Blackmon!

Walter Fox
Ferguson, MO

By: Karen

Karen — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:56:19 +0000

Thank you Douglas Blackmon and Tom Ashbrook. This is amazing reporting. I thought lynching was about how low people in this country could go. I was wrong. I cried listening to Douglas describe how, during institutionalized slavery at least the slave had value, but during this unofficial slavery, men were literally worked to the limits of human life — to death — and no one protested unless the death rates got to 30% or more. I will read the book.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:10:55 +0000

Re: slavery in today’s world, well… just in one New England state: People may be aware that this (unnamed) state does not currently have laws on the books outlawing prostitution indoors, only outdoors. Therefore, the police do not have the legal tools to investigate when some of that prostitution is possibly by abducted or conned sex-workers, perhaps including minors, illegally trafficked into the U.S., more often than not, it is believed. Our House of Representatives finally passed their end of a bill to make indoor prostitution illegal just a few weeks ago. The state Senate has to pass the new law next. Modern-day sexual slavery may soon come to an end in this state!

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:00:35 +0000

Mr. Garcia- While you have some valid points, I just don’t understand how you can have listened to this program and walked away with the victimization of white southerners as your chief concern.

By: Sidewalker

Sidewalker — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:17:20 +0000

This history shows us once again that the rule of law is always a tool of those who seek power. Under capitalism, law is also a tool of the wealthy classes or their thugs, such as small-town sheriffs.

Today, look at the use of the Patriot Act and private militia, such as Blackwater. Also consider how public funds, as taxes, are being “legally” transferred to elites in corporations.

This book also raises the question of who are the slaves by another name today that are used to enrich corporations through exploitation of their labor.

By: Kris

Kris — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:12:41 +0000

I am reading this book now. I think the important lesson that I’ve learned from this book is not only did slavery continue after the Emancipation Proclamation but continues today in the United States as the human trafficking of people from Mexico, the Phillipines, etc. as nannies, dishwashers, prostitutes, sweatshop workers, etc. Outsourcing corporations using sweatshops also rely on slave labor to increase their fortunes. We have not solved this problem yet.

By: Drums in the Global Village » Blog Archive » “Investigative History” About 20th Century Slavery of Blacks Wins Pulitzer

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:58:00 +0000

[...] a listen. Take a [...]

By: Gil Garcia

Gil Garcia — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:26:30 +0000

Ann, very much appreciate the links. However, that is not the point I am trying to make. There may be many scholarly texts around but how many are seen in high school classroooms or any classroom for that matter? How often is the black condition explained, particularly in schools, in terms other than Southern racism and bigotry with a nod to the minor sins of early Northerners who have been completely absolved of any wrong and viewed as evenhanded saviors? How many people know of the black slaveholder (see http://books.google.com/books?id=8jcUAAAAYAAJ) far and few between they were but true. What about the Klan in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan that is still active? What about white flight in Boston that I watched on the evening news (CBS) in years past? Never or very very rarely touched on. The point is we are “post racial” as long as you are not Southern, or a Southerner that constantly admits their sin of bigotry and on bended knee begging absolution. And if your are white, then you are truely guilty and damned regardless.

By: Bob Burns

Bob Burns — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:15:59 +0000

Thank you for this book and for helping me understand things that were hidden from me about my familys relationships with their black “dependents”. We benefited from blacks who attached themselves to us for protection from law officers. It was clearly modeled for me our responsibilities toward “our” blacks – to go down and spring them from jail when they had been “naughty”.

I am a 57 year old white southerner. My Family is from rural Tennessee, I grew up in Wilmington, NC and have lived 30 years in Birmingham, AL. The people who perpetrated these atrocities did not disappear in 1965 or (in too many cases) change their minds. This is not just about the past but also about a possible future. We have to be vigilant. Books like this are invaluable to those still engaged in the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality.

I also believe it is important to note that Mr. Blackmon’s is the fifth Pulitzer Prize winning book to be researched at the amazing Birmingham Public Library.

By: Sean

Sean — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:21:38 +0000

Listening today I thought of recently reported practices used today in parts of Texas. Upon being pulled over
a driver is at risk of having any cash on hand confiscated by police in the name of fighting the drug trade. There is no need for formal charges or trial.
Today’s economy needs not your labor, your cash feeds the system just fine. Unbelievable.

By: Bill Mayo

Bill Mayo — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:45:59 +0000

Excellent show. As a Southern white male I became aware of this subject when I read ‘The Emancipation of Robert Sadler’ twenty five years ago.

Per your caller’s reference to Jeremiah Wright: Wright’s delivery is the problem much more so than his message. Even compared to Malcolm X (who I admire), Wright’s “show” is entertaining in an inflammatory sort of way but does little to encourage thinking outside the box. Obama got “street cred” in his church and I imagine little else.

By: Richard Juste

Richard Juste — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:27:51 +0000

Just think of the lesson taught to generations of black people: work hard, save, start to pull yourselves up…and a bunch of white guys will come ’round and push you back down again. It’s a very toxic lesson, but who can fault them for learning it, or, when it has been taught so forcefully, having difficulty unlearning it?

By: Denise Dunbar

Denise Dunbar — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:02:40 +0000

How else are we going to heal from the tragedy of our common history.
As a descendant of exploited captive Africans it is important that we revisit the omissions our textbooks overlooked. Thank you for the work you do.
The history of lynching in America is another wound on our national character. Like Blackmons scholarship, Sherrilyn A. Ifill’s timely book
On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-First Century is a must for any social studies educator vested in social justice teaching.

Denise H. Dunbar MA- Chittenden County Coordinator Reading to End Racism and
Graduate Teaching Fellow- UVM

By: Ann

Ann — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:57:02 +0000

Gil Garcia,

Here are two great links regarding blacks and the North. There are scores of fantastic scholarly books on the topic as well, so look at the bibliographies on both of these sites. The new scholars write as brilliantly as novelists only they are using primary source materials to inform us about our shared history!!!!

Here is the link to the Brown University investigation into the Rhode Island slave trade, including information on members of the Brown University founding family. Another RI family was the largest single slave-trading family in US history: their history is included also. This document is a fantastic introduction to the history of the American role in the slave trade, slavery in the north and the debate about reparations from various points of view:

http://www.brown.edu/Research/Slavery_Justice/report/index.html

Here is the link to a fantastic series about slavery and the slave trade in Rhode Island from the Providence Journal newspaper:

http://www.projo.com/extra/2006/slavery/

Thanks for your interest!