Title: Douglas Blackmon: Neo-Slavery in Our Times

" I'm Christopher -- this is open source from the Watson institute at brown university and American conversation -- with global. Attitude we're fixing today on an investigative work of American history Douglas -- revelation. Of slavery by another name the reinstatement of black Americans from the civil war to World War II. It's a book that will make any reader quiver -- I think -- universal human horror at what we're capable. -- and are going to say also I quiver with admiration and all but you're accomplishment. You told the story of slavery in the Jim -- but the implications about racial reality in America today and we've got to get caller. You tell the story of slavery that sprung up. Again strong and wide after the emancipation proclamation in the and his two war. We have heard all the euphemisms like -- servitude forced labor P image and share cropping. That amounted to something like bonded but. You -- the broadest documentation free blacks being framed on flimsy in on crimes dignity for example for not having a job at a moment. And then being imprisoned by the states in -- to mines or -- time plans. Quarry is a brick factories and made too hot foot through also -- donkey work. Under the constant threat at the last action and numerous civil flogging. As prisoners. Prisoners of the statement by any other name slaves of southern industry in a building problem that went deep into the twentieth century. Tell us how you how you came upon it and and tell it your way."

" First thanks for having me Christopher it's great to have a chance to talk about the book. The way that I came to this was as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. And I had written a number of stories in the late 1990s that raise the question. Of what would happen if American corporations were subjected to an examination. Through the same lens of historical scrutiny. Then at that time. German corporations and Swiss banks were being examined through. In connection to slave labor during the Holocaust and theft of Jewish fortunes left with with Swiss banks and and that started me on on a process of of of curiosity about both how the south -- the United States generally. How differently it had forced itself to process the past are not to process its own deal to frankly in the past. How differently that it happened in America then then we had insisted on it happening in Europe. And the same time. It also made me think that American corporations who plays such a fundamentally integral role. In the policing of the Jim Crow segregation laws and practices of American society in the first three quarters of the century. The corporations really had not ever been asked to go back America never had a truth and reconciliation process to go back and wasn't really even until 1990s that homicides of civil rights are being investigated and prosecuted. And so that that set me on a path of writing several stories that looked at some of these historical questions related to corporate conduct that. Through the course of that I came across a reference to a place in Alabama. Where there had been coal mines operated by US steel corporation in the early part of the twentieth century him and it was obvious. That the workers there many thousands of them had been black forced laborers forty years after the in the Slattery. And so by a set out it's been about a year to. To pin down whether or not that was the case and specifically to pin down whether a big burial fields on the edge of Birmingham was in fact they they took the the final resting place for hundreds of of these workers and eventually I was able to establish conclusively that it was. And began to piece together the story of the people who had been trapped in that place and horrors that there were subjected to one of whom was a man named green Tottenham. And that story appeared in I was a fairly electric response to that among some people and that led to the book."

" so you work in the Wall Street Journal and it's it's remarkable but who knew. Why didn't we -- before you. That this system was pervasive and involved vast number of black slaves and -- thousand for sure. With the radiant effects on the whole population. But who also knew that it was massively documented."

" Well at the time that it was happening everyone knew about office the the what was what and part of what is so striking about talking about it now. Is that. Everyone in the south knew that this was happening and for the most part everyone in the south was. Who found it acceptable. Because we're inducing debates in Georgia and actually -- serious resistance is it was known. It was found and there was there was resistance from some quarters there was criticism of it in the north to some degree. But the but fundamentally. The the the practice that we're talking about here. Was one element. Of a much larger phenomenon that occurred all across white society in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth. In which northern lights abandoned for the most part abandoned African Americans in the south. But it lights were tired of the long struggle to figure out how to integrate freed slaves and their descendants into American society. There were frustrated by it is that paralyzed. The national political process for decades the in the south white southerners increasingly word we're demanding that they be allowed to settle quote unquote the negro question. Themselves the vast majority of African Americans still lived in the south. And even though. Almost a full generation of African Americans had it had in fact experienced. Legitimate full blown freedom in the aftermath of the civil war for for thirty years or more after the civil war. Blacks in the enormous numbers voted in elections participated as citizens acquired property to it to some degree separated themselves from the white families that control their lives before set ups and downs and communities. And enterprises and they still lived in indigent and part and and illiteracy in many respects but in fact there were also thousands and thousands of schools and hundreds of thousands of black children we're getting educations. There's this tremendous. Blossoming of freedom amid poverty. Immediately after the civil war but what began to happen at the end of the nineteenth century was this crushing new phenomenon in which. Whites in the north gave up on the whole process and the laugh out and made a decision that whites in the south we're gong to be allowed to do whatever they wished. The plessy V Ferguson Supreme Court decision that that's sanctified segregation 1896. Gave the legal basis for all of this and by 1900. All of the southern states have passed an array of laws. Designed to make it almost impossible for a black man to avoid being in violation of Sama. Ridiculous statute at all time being that being by the time. Being black became the crime and so any black man who could not. Prove that he had a job at any given moment any Blackmun who sought to change employers without permission from the first employer. In a black man who tried to sell the produce of his farm after dark rather than selling it to the white man nearest him who who was probably they of a merchant in farm goods. -- the talking loudly in the presence of white women walking near a railroad line on the property of the a railroad company that an endless number of statutes were passed. Which made it nearly impossible to avoid. Prosecution and almost all of which we eventually declared unconstitutional are or where we were invalid on the base. And the these laws were designed to to finish off the process of disenfranchising all black Americans in the south. And and effectively did this by creating this legal jeopardy that all African Americans had to live in. And at the hammer that hung over their heads was the idea that if you get convicted of one of these ridiculous. Meaningless crimes you'll end up in the horrifying circumstances of a slave mines or some other sort of forced labor camp. And so that was all known the in the those are happening -- time and there were people who protested the level of violence. That occurred in the camps because there were -- beatings hundred unit in a relatively small work camp where you have 75 or eighty force flavors or maybe -- hundred. There might well be three or 400 flogging in any given month. The the man in the minds. Were beaten in the mornings if they had failed to remove eight tons of coal a day before and they were beaten at the end of the day if they failed term is -- tons of cold that day. They were starved they were deprived of of health care and the general attitude of those who controlled these flavors was that as long as I'm able to keep them for one year two years and that that I'll get back my investment and the costs of acquiring them and if they guy -- and cheaply fine now."

" I think you're talking about so many things that have very very direct implications in our America 2008 including this whole question. Crimes that amount to being black but -- distorted changed me or just projecting ahead a little bit but. The core of the story and has and its implications is that the effective and -- Of the most brutal and abuses slavery arrived not 140 plus years or five or 67 generations ago with the emancipation proclamation. In 1865. It arrived with the onset of World War II. In the late 1930s which -- to say 6070 years ago but it touches on grandfathers and family visitors still. Very much alive today Atlanta's sidewalks were paved well into the twenty century with millions of bricks. That were made by forced labor. But it meant that the city had seized at least you're describing. To the X -- and changing the issues Chattahoochee brick company. And some of that that is finest families who were in on this neo slavery like jewel hurt Atlantis trust company. No guard could ever do enough -- for mr. hurt it was said he wanted men equipped for singing and laughing. Short for -- the story runs into our own or on America. How do we begin dealing with that -- so many people want to you know put -- all -- back in history."

" Chris -- that's. That that that's the most important aspect of the book -- and respects and at the end of the book guy in the epilogue. Actually have a series of conversations with people who are alive today. Are who currently saliva few years ago about how these events connect to the present in terms of specific family specific companies. Our society at large and whether these are things that we really need to excavate and once excavated which we do with them. But you you're you're exactly right that and I there's a chapter of the book called. Aren't -- the introductions of the bricks we stand on it and and these bricks that were made at the Chattahoochee brick factory as of Atlanta. Are the bricks that paved sidewalks today in the neighborhood that I live. Today they are under the pavement of the streets for blocks and blocks and blocks of of the older sections of Atlanta. These elderly are the breaks that we stand on in Atlanta. And -- energy brick company which operated with a 100% forced labor. Until about nineteen -- and produced one of the wealthiest families and Lana and from that wealth came some of the most. -- Connick corporations in the south in the twentieth century certainly ritual and -- Well a bank that was formed the kept mayor English the man who started that that plant and two was the mayor of the city and 1880s and and one of its most important political leaders for decades after. Relying on the wealth that came from -- he started a bank in the 1890s which. Eventually with Simpson and into what is today Wachovia bank and Wachovia by the way it to us in the side I would say. Is is accompanied it's notable today because of its openness to discuss in the past and -- has its one of the companies that has discovered. That is actually great good. In exploring these issues and that's a way building trust with the employees today. But but so kept inning and Mary English is bank became an element of Wachovia and he was also a and our league board member of trust company bank and other bank in Atlanta which the wealth from trust company bank flowed over the next decade or two into companies which -- to the founding of companies like Georgia power which is one of the largest electric utilities in the country and its parent company southern company which owns utilities all across the south and it also was a these were all men who. Played a role in the in the formation of Coca-Cola corporation modern entity of Coca-Cola kind of that is to say by the way. That those modern companies bear any specific responsibility for these events done by their founders are by people associated with their founders. But it is to say. That it's important for us to know today that. Letting people who are with us today the easy -- extended into their lifetimes. Living people even you know -- even people who were not alive in that time such as myself. Our beneficiaries in various ways. Of these systems that were set up in the first part of the twentieth century and the companies that we rely on today and that many of us owns stock in -- or buy the products of in one way or another relate back to these times. And or shaped in their origins these events and so in the past is not dead. The pass is. Is is an element of of two of our lives around -- now -- one understand why things are the way they are today and even more so with the future holds. We have to be honest about this past. And that's really what this book's all about."

" You know what partners said the best isn't even past -- applies for her is acutely right here. Would you take this back little more than a hundred years ago into this. System of trading and selling exploiting beating. In the in the neo slavery as people call it. How was it like the original chattel slavery how is it different hadn't industrial dimension for one thing but it must've been. -- all sorts of contrasts and comparisons possible here."

" Well let me let me tell you a little bit about green Tottenham and his family green Cunningham was a man born in the 1880s so twenty years after the end of slavery as we typically think of it. His parents had both been slaves on separate farms in southern Alabama. Henry and Mary cut him. And his grandfather or great grandfather is a little -- it's a little difficult to determine how many generations have passed. But his grandfather great grandfather was a slave named Cynthia who have been born in Africa in eighteen attitude. And had found his way in through through multiple sales and ended up on the farm of a white family in southern Alabama. He was a classic slave of the antebellum era as we understand that's as we have learned about it in history classes. He lived on the farm of this family for fifty years. He had two lives he had many many children his children had many children they lived -- in the terrible circumstances and certain oath no kind of slavery could be anything but terrible. But there was some sort of familial. Warmth between the whites on this land in the blacks on the slant and there was some economic incentive to the white owners. To preserve the health of the slaves. And to encourage them to live in family units have some sort of normal human family life. If only so that more children would be born more slaves would be created and advancing the wealth. And the labor possibilities for the white family and so the at the encouragement the economic incentives of the old system. Where at least once that encouraged the survival and the longevity and some minimal level of help. For the slaves that were owned by this Pamela. But by the time green cut hams parents married to in the winter of 1865 in the war ravaged Alabama that as -- existed. They were entering into this new period of freedom after the war in which slavery did effects of side they had this authentic period of freedom. But and then green is born. In the 1880s he's the ninth of their children not all of whom survived and he begins to grow to adulthood just as this terrible shadow is falling across black life in the south. And by the time he becomes a man right at 1900. The full force and fury of this new effort to enslave blacks and disenfranchise them while civil rights has a reached this. This pinnacle but it's in fact a plateau which will will continue for the next thirty years. And and he then is arrested on a cold morning in Shelby county Alabama almost exactly a hundred years ago the way marks the thirtieth nineteen away and so it's 100 anniversary in a few weeks now and green is arrested the officer ressam can't even the term can't remember between the timing arrest him in the time it takes into a judge few hours later. He can't keep straight what the charge was was it for petty theft was a for vague currency was -- four being on the property of the railroad company he can't really decide finally they just settle on they currency which is the catchall crime. They can be applied to almost any black man under any circumstances. As of grain and another man are convicted of this and kangaroo proceeding -- held in jail for three days and then -- delivered along with all the other men had been collected in the jail over the previous week or so. The delivered by our wagon to a giant mine complex owned by US steel corporation on the outskirts of Birmingham. -- there they are forced into the mines there worked under malnourished conditions. They are chain that ninth change in the day. There work that they're forced to pick and and -- called oftentimes standing in ankle and the -- even deeper water they're not provided drinking water than -- provided decent medical care none of the economic incentives and -- slavery. That said we need to keep these slaves alive for a long period of time none of those incentives existed because they were so inexpensive to acquire. That women died finding another one was incredibly simple very easy to replace. As a green Cunningham lived in this nightmarish underground harbor. And as if he failed to dig the requisite amount of -- as was the case with anyone -- he was subject to these whipping he was subject to -- these slave mines often used a form of what we now call water boarding this forcing the water into the into the nostrils and mouths of of of of workers who disobeyed. They were lashed they were put in shackles they were that they were held over barrels that -- that they were just horrifying forms of torture were used. To discipline these workers and when that became sicker ill there was very -- care available for them and when they died they were dumped in shallow mines in the debris fields where the where the with a rock and slack of the mine were dumped or their bodies were tossed. Into Coke ovens where the goal was baked it was blasted into another form fuel. And so the the new slavery the neo slavery that existed after the civil war. Was not chattel slavery if you had a child it was not necessarily the case that the same fate would befall them. No one held a deed on a slave in this period of time so it is distinct from what was happening before the civil war. But it was also. In human. And brutalizing them on a level that I think is frankly very difficult for any of us to comprehend today. It was -- what did green programs family. Know or suspect or learn about what it happened to him. Well it's hard to know and that's one of the that's one of the greats. Mysteries and and poignant -- of this process is that this. Apocalyptic sequence of events occurred against a people. Who were on the whole impoverished and at -- green could read and write a little his mother could not his father could not the but even green knowing how to write his name and being able to two rightly so very rudimentary sort of way. Green just like millions of other African Americans at the time. Had no capacity to write letters or diaries are or memoirs of surviving this period -- unlike. Other populations that have been bushel are. And you've been relatively affluent middle class well educated and -- were able to record events like this -- then this is not to compare these events to the Holocaust. But it is though it is worthwhile to to see that. That the Jewish people were able to document the horror that was enveloping them in a way. That African Americans were unable to as a we don't know. What greens you know that we don't know the names of his girlfriends are we don't have letters from him to his mother from his mother back to him which he talks about this these terrible things were beginning to happen to him. And so we really don't know what they knew at the time but we do know that after he died. His existence was almost completely extinguished and that the record that he had ever lived it was reduced. To five or six scraps of paper and in the end is his mother died I suspect not knowing where he would. Where he had been buried or exactly how how is -- have come."

" But Doug I am also thinking that what we know here is that this wasn't a secret the whole system was designed to send out a radiant. Message of social humiliation. And control it certainly was connected to. Are rampant anti unionism in the south and a whole system. Of labor how'd that work the the wider vibrations of this kind of thing."

" Well it was a it was a very straightforward kind of terror that. In the days that it became very clear to any young black man in the south that if he crossed white authority whatever form that might take whether that's the sheriff or large landowner -- white man who controlled a particular part of the county that he was in that that any black man who crossed white authority was vulnerable to this sequence of events happen. -- but that also meant not just that. That white man and the black men would go along with these these expectations of them of of the sort of serve I'll behavior and and coerced labor. It wasn't just that this the that the sort of language and interaction between blacks and whites that was affected -- of this was also that if you were sharecropper. Our farm ten fewer free labor who successfully avoiding the prison labor system. The white man who owned the land that you worked on. Was the wide authority in your world. And if you crossed him and if you cross them for instance by seeking a bigger share of the crop because you believe you deserved that. All are attempting to move to the land of another and owner because you thought you might get a better deal there are be provided with. With better food or better equipment are less physical abuse whatever the case if you attempted to do any of those things are if you attempted to just leave the county and move blew away -- from these terrible things. You were highly likely to end up being arrested and charged with one of these other crimes and then forced into the -- prison labor system. And so. The threat of that system Hong over the lives of millions of other blacks very actively hung over the lives of mains whether blacks who were working -- free sharecroppers in free tennis and this was a primary reason. Why and how they were forced to go along with these other incredibly abusive practices that were fundamental to the entire economy that's out. And."

" The writer and scholar WEB -- boys born in Massachusetts. Wrote in you -- and that the cells can you must've been speaking around 1910. So -- that is simply an armed camp for intimidating black folk. He knew a great deal about the end of reconstruction and wrote about it in the souls of black -- What more did he know and what do the what do -- say it the time that there is a kind of re reading a new light."

" But there's a fascinating episode of the boy's life and work which actually has not been. Asks aggressively examined in the past as it probably deserves to be. But in 196 while the voice was actually -- professor at that historically black college in Atlanta he had already completed several groundbreaking sociological surveys involving labor in particular locations in the south. That had been commissioned by the federal commissioner of labor time and so he here was this in the voice Pacino was the first black Ph.D.s from Harvard University and an extraordinary intellect are almost it's difficult to describe what when a towering sort of figure he was in terms of in elect and his stature in social science at the time when it should have been. But in 196 he's commissioned by the federal government to do a study on black farmers in the lounge county Alabama -- and he takes a team. Of the young researchers some of -- will go on to remarkable careers in the rest of the twentieth century he takes his group of black researchers with him. They go to Alaska Alabama this set up in a little private school there operated by a white philanthropists lady who come down from the north and they spend a summer in 96. Interviewing the 30000 black families in Alaska Alabama. And I ask Janet was the heart of darkness of Alabama in terms of he had 30000 black families and about 5000 white families. It and one of the most -- slave populations of any county in the country before the civil war it was still a classic. Cotton -- culture the counting was dominated by one particular white man whose name was WD McCurdy. His family -- tens of thousands of acres of land there. And to voice goes and spends a summer or longer performing this exhaustive social studies of this place. In which slavery ongoing continuing slavery was rampant was was on on just an unbelievable scale and we know this from several other sources as well. But so the voice goes and does this extraordinary steady. He finishes the work he compiles an altogether typewriters were relatively new development at the time and so he he put together. The the compendium of of the research and his his interpretation of it in a report that is written in longhand and of which there's only one copy. And he submits that the federal commissioner of labor and asked that it be published and he'd be paid the last in the last of the grants that he was he was receiving. Long story short. The commissioner of labor refuses to publish it and after much inquiry from to voice the pressure finally says. That the that the study touched on political issues and so would never be published the voice asked for its return and he's informed that it has been destroyed. And so the only copy of this is lost to history. However to voice a few years later writes his first novel. The quest for the silver fleets. And they're very obscure novel but in the novel. He essentially recycles what he saw in Blount county into this fictional telling of the place that is an incredibly powerful portrait. Of just how pervasively slavery still existed in the country as late as 1961910. I think that -- for many years many people who might have studied du -- and may have read the novel may have actually. Disregarded it as hyperbole some degree because of this national instincts that we all share to to minimize the severity of these events but the reality was -- caller refractive testimony. The reality was that that fictionalized portrait Blount county Alabama by du -- is one of the most searing a and unvarnished looks at the totality in reality of this regime as it existed there."

" But it couldn't find it nobody we do voices the quest for the so we're pleased and the mobile version of his study slavery in -- county in the first decade of twentieth century. -- One of the fascinating things in your book is the extensive documentation by. For example the Alabama legislative inquiry 1881 there was another one in the twentieth century in Georgia what what did those. Those looks surface and what what of that news cut articulated then -- now."

" Well those those legislative inquiries which would occur periodically in southern states or some are other forms of official proceedings to investigate the conditions and in in the labor camps. Every few years that would be one of those somewhere in the south. Generally what they began mass word investigations into financial improprieties because these. The system of of leasing workers out from the from state prisons from county and county jails. Was an incredibly lucrative one it was how sheriffs all across the south made most of their money affects sheriff's at the time received a salary typically and in all of their compensation came from fees that were charged two prisoners for their own arrest. And then sheriffs also receive money because the states would pay them a certain amount of money per day to feed there. They're prisoners and the sheriff couldn't within feed them however he wanted to do and if he could do it for less than the amount of money he was getting. And he can keep the difference and so the financial incentives for sheriff's became -- arrest as many people as possible and feed them as little as possible. And so that's just one example though of how the system generated enormous amounts of money. It was the largest single source of revenue for the state of Alabama for many many years. As of millions and millions and millions of dollars from being generated off the sale of this labor. And so the control of that system was very important both financially and politically in all the southern states that practiced it. As -- periodically they would be some sort of of a pro but usually beginning with an allegation of financial impropriety. And sometimes beginning with a concern over the abuse of prisoners though typically. Those inquiries would begin after the relatively rare event of a white person being drawn into the system and there were whites 5% 10% at times of whites. Of all the prisoners who were in the states systems word fact white. And and periodically word would leak out of a horrifying thing that would happen white boy being tortured to death. Our play in the it was a particularly famous -- Florida where a boy an important Hebert. Who was wandering around the country from his farm in Wisconsin for corporately ended up in Florida and gets arrested and sold into a -- time camp and he's beaten to death and so that led to an inquiry in Florida. But typically these things would begin focused on political objectives. But along the way in the course of the testimony. A record would be created in which was actually documented just how horrifying and brutalizing the whole system laws. Sometimes that led to a public -- as it was so horrifying that they would then be public response as there was in Georgia in nineteen nine in in a series of events that led Georgia finally stopped selling prisoners of the state court system. But rarely was that even when these occurred. The system. Was merely evolving it was never really going away. Because the intention was this broad terrorism nation. And coercion of African Americans all across the south and all of the reforms that happened along the way while. On paper today in the high side and headlines at the time. Claims would be made these were great steps forward. The reality was the blacks in the south where the which sinking deeper and deeper with every year into this -- involuntary servitude that really didn't begin to break up. Until the beginning of World War II."

" Doug -- when I was in college in the late sixties. I think everybody read a book called the strange career of Jim Crow by C Vann Woodward. I've forgotten most of it but I'm just wondering as I read your book what were we supposed to know. What of this story had really been articulated before this remarkable book reviewers slavery by another name."

" Well I think what you're supposed to know and I think you'll find this if you go back and re re re read OC Vann Woodward today or any number of other of the extraordinary scholars of this period like -- Daniel partly -- lack and third in more recent ones like Mary Ellen Curtin crawled all Dan Carter those are all. Tremendous historians who have dealt with this period of parts of this period and did important research and on -- eyes stand in some respects -- or stood as I began my book. But the the differences in many of these respects particularly with what you were being taught from in the 1960s. Which you were supposed to draw on what you would find if you went back to those books today is that there is a discussion about convicts leasing quote unquote. The idea that. That and and essentially the idea that in the aftermath of slavery. There were. Large numbers of freed slaves and their descendants who were. Unfit for freedom in many respects this idea that on that freed slaves had difficulty adjusting emotionally and otherwise to the post emancipation period and that they then went on a great spree of crime. And then there were waves of petty crime all over the -- that kind of chaos driven by freed slaves and -- response to that. The southern states set up this system is penal system that relied on. Arresting large numbers of blacks and then selling them into servitude for a limited period of time. And that's all represented in the conventional history of of the period what's missing from that. It and and also it's represented and there is an acknowledgment. That many African Americans were treated very badly in that system and that was more brutal than it should have been. That's the conventional history. Of the period and the known story. The problem is it's fundamentally wrong and what's wrong with that is. There were not these giant waves of crime at least not in any place that I can find. And when I began to look into this what I did which was different from what must historians have done. Was I took the position that if in fact there was this giant. -- break of criminality which had to be suppressed. There had to be some documentation of that on -- police reporter I know pieces of paper generated when when that when someone's brought to the jail. Even in the 1880s that was the case and so I began going from courthouse to courthouse across Alabama and Georgia and parts of Florida. Asking for. The old arrest record the old registries for inmates of the county's jails. In most places I would initially be told that those didn't exist anymore no one could remember them ever having existed. But as I've asked -- longer stayed around awhile. Began to understand the old filing systems myself began to say gee I bet there's someplace in the basement of this old courthouse where there's a big stack of leather bound books that -- looked at -- long time. I bet that was the time that that a lot of old stuff was stored in a storage room somewhere nearby. And all the scenarios of against alarm of what would've happened of these documents. And over the course of months and years really I was able to find that in all kinds of places there are thousands and thousands and thousands hundreds of thousands of pages. Of documentation of this period of time and what they show. Oftentimes is that a rural counting. Where they'll be no arrests at all there's actually no crime whatsoever for months at a time are maybe the occasional drop it is arrested. And then suddenly out of the blue. There will be fifteen -- when he black man rounded up in the course of the three or four days all of them charged with these incredibly trivial offenses that almost always were based on fabricated circumstances. And then within a day or two days all of them delivered to a slave mine on the outskirts of Birmingham or some other forced labor camp. It's fairly transparent what's happening there. And so that's the reality of of of that system that you may have heard about on half a page -- a couple of pages of a conventional history book that for that whole period of time. But that was built on assumption that these were actual criminals who merited some kind of punishment. But we're being punished too severely the truth is. Huge numbers of these men were not criminals at all they were simply victims of a new form of slavery."

" It -- this is completely fascinating it's intriguing to hear your method hanging around the courthouses but also I'm intrigued about you your era police reporter as you saved grew up in the Mississippi delta. -- the Wall Street Journal. Bureau chief in Atlanta that's a big job which are also becoming the broadest sort of social and economic historian. Of a region this country. What are you up to. -- are you."

" Twelfth I am I am a kid from the Mississippi delta I was born on Arkansas side of the Mississippi River. In the fall of 1964 which was of course right after freedom summer when Schwerner Goodman Chaney were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1969. The little town that I would grow up and in Mississippi proper. In the center of the delta in 1969 a group of black high school students there are held a peaceful march to protest the segregated schools. And were fired on with tear gas. -- their local red neck police chief and one of the students will then shot by a store owner when he burst into the feed and seed store. And then at about the same time a group of black farmworkers on a plantation outside of town went on strike it was the first farm labor strife in the south since then. Since the middle of the depression and they were forced out of their homes and forced off the farm in fact a few of them are still living in an encampment -- now almost fifty years later they're still out there. Still on strike. And then in 1970. I was in the first class of children in Mississippi to begin the first great together black and white. And -- course of that time a six year old I had no idea of those events that I was just describing but I was very aware that everyone was incredibly angry at everyone else. And I was baffled I'm mystified staff whites for -- it -- you know the white suit didn't who left the public schools which was vast majority of them. Angry at those who stayed those who stayed angry at those who left blacks were angry those who left blacks were angry at those who stayed some Lex remanded each other it was a there's a time of just tremendous anger and hostility. And I was perplexed by that and I try to understand that the in this questions about it even as a -- those questions were always welcome but I was. But I became fixed on trying to understand why things word that way they -- and things were still pretty terrible then and it in my childhood you name it in my lifetime as a very young child in 1965. There was a cold snap in the Mississippi delta. And there were elderly blacks who froze to death from it in Mississippi you know in the in in a subtropical climate in my lifetime. And so I was very perplexed by those things as a kid and I I ask a lot of questions and I even began to write about them even this child. And by the time I was an adult race and the past. Where were issues that I that I gravitated back to again and again even SI learned to do a lot of other things in -- a lot of other stories as well and I guess today that's still what I'm doing is. Is just trying to answer that question and understand it in a very empirical way -- factual way. But in an honest unvarnished way. Asked the question why are things the way they are today what are the real explanations for that and so I guess that's trying to do."

" It's remarkable work I mean remove this book gives me goose bumps just when you think about how good journalism can be. How important how relentless how persuasive so beautifully written but then. We all have to deal with a -- in many dimensions I wonder. If you can sum up sort of where you go with so many questions about it for example. The matter of reparations how in the world can this sort of damage be repaired economically and then of course. Humanly especially as we learn in your -- how recent it is. I think also -- you know reverend right in Chicago he Easter -- of the terrible storm. By being angry and even even thinking god damn America and yet how how can we not. Here that completely differently in the light of your history where do we go -- this freezes. Extremely painful knowledge to congress."

" But we live in a paradoxical time it is paradoxical because on the one hand ours is a country that has been significantly in denial about. Some of the events that that that we've been talking about the book is about and we've been in denial about it in ways. That have confused us about why our society operates the way that -- today also are denial has particularly the denial of whites but there's also version of black denial about some of this and that's another complicated topic. But that denial is also part of what is so offensive and hurtful for for particularly older African Americans to experience some aspects of all of this and so. On the one hand that is well why wouldn't say it would use the exact words that reverend Wright used in some of the comments that that have caused controversy."

" Over the biblical profits you know Jeremiah and company used stronger language than that in in booking. God's judgment and his wayward people I mean it's it's the point is simply that it's not to be. Shocked or surprised -- this kind of astonishment."

" No one no no one can read this book and unless you think -- it all up from which didn't no one can read this book. And and still claim not to have any comprehension. Of where the anger springs from four but for the feelings of a person like reverend right and for that matter -- can read his book and still. Wonder why African Americans generally culturally. Have an ingrained sense of mistrust for the judicial system I mean this book I think explains a lot about that but in terms of the the of the bigger paradox. At the same time we have that we denied all these things and that has causes all all sorts of difficulties and problems. We have also. Come further in terms of creating a multicultural multiracial society in which astonishingly a black man can actually become president what we've come further and achieved more than perhaps any other society in human history. And so we have this paradox that we have gained so much. But we have still refused to acknowledge -- to understand so many other things and so what I would say in terms of where we go from here. It's not so much a question of reparations which I personally am still uncertain of exactly how one would proceed with that. When we already have a tried and true method that which is of how we've come to where we are which in terms of being open to to things like affirmative action and scholarship programs and some of the sorts of things that I've benefited from NASA. SE the so white kid and that the descendants of the black family that lived on the same piece of land my grandparents armed. Fifty years ago did not benefit from. -- we have a lot of just basic equalizing that that is still due to be done. But the bottom line in my philosophy about all of this my approach to it. Focuses on. Simply the importance of being honest about the past and not shying away from. Acknowledging the severity. Of what really happens in the first half of the twentieth century and the scale of the injuries that left behind. I think if we can begin to be more honest as plain spoken about all of that. Then the question as to what to do about it -- the it clear."

" I like you're plain spoken I mean do the historians did it get drug a year or two. Come out of their numbers in new details in their localism. Into a bigger more instructors picture that that all of us can recognize here that how we have to recognize."

" Well I would say that yes and again that's not to say that there aren't historians to who have said some versions of this but there has been a reluctance. Two to acknowledge that that things that happened here there -- there any on and that looked a little different from each other share cropping. Looks a little different than convict leasing but in reality they're awfully similar. And there has been a tendency of historians to slice and dice so much that and center to see share cropping is one thing. Prison labor system is another thing political intimidation is another thing racial violence the Ku Klux Klan has yet a different thing. There's this tendency to break it up. Anna and two and also to sort of explain it away as sort of inevitable. And is simply an outgrowth of big broad social forces. That were at play at the end of the civil war. And that also comes along with that seems to be a sensibility that most Americans have shared. That that the poverty and serve -- status of black Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century was somehow kind of natural. And we've we've tended to all buy into that idea and that these things work not the fault of anyone but we're just inevitable disconnected events. And the truth is if you just stop. And look honestly these things in you realize as a journalist does. That the events that things that happened today are the result of decisions made yesterday. And things happen because someone decided to do them and that's the reality of this period. There were there was an opportunity at the end of the nineteenth century not to have brought slavery back. But the bad guys who wanted to back defeated the guys who were less certain about it. And people made decisions that caused these terrible injuries to occur. We have to be honest about those things and we should be willing to say. This all adds up to a new form of slavery not try to minimize that because it is so. Challenging to some of our basic methodologies of who we are us Americans and I do think that historians could use to some historians could use a bit. And a wakeup call to say have we been missing the forest for the tree."

" It -- by creditors are great -- to. Here you on open source I'm hugely indebted to you for this book slavery by another name not fun to read. It's staggering in its in its message and its meaning. Even for everyday life. In 2008 thank you -- Blackmun and keep doing it. Well thank you for having me it's general pleasure to talk about it with the"