Slavery by Another Name



Douglas Blackmon, a bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal (one of the most conservative papers in America), was doing a story involving the industrial revolution in the South following the Civil War. While visiting a historic iron ore mine in Alabama, Blackmon stumbled across a section of the site that contained numerous graves. Curious, he asked his guide what they were looking at. The answer shocked him and began a long journey into the ugliness of the so-called judicial system that exploded across the former Confederacy following the emancipation of their cheap labor.

Combing through spotty records that (amazingly) still exist in rural courthouses and linking those leads with personal correspondence and diaries from the same time period, Blackmon was able to reconstruct a shameful history of corrupt law enforcement officers, corrupt politicians and corrupt government officials all conspiring to oppress black people, coercing innocents into forced labor and, as those initial graves will attest, gruesome deaths that were tantamount to murder.


If you thought slavery ended in America in 1865, you are wrong. 

WARNING: this book contains scenes and themes that some readers will find unpleasant. Believe it or not, that's okay. READ IT ANYWAYS and use that uncomfortable anger/disgust to do something about it!

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