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Slavery By Another Name Analysis

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Prior to watching the documentary Slavery by Another Name, if anyone would ask me when did slavery end, I would’ve replied that slavery ended with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. All throughout my childhood education, that is what I was taught. I wasn’t aware of terms such as “convict leasing” that the documentary alluded to all throughout its running time. While I was watching this video, I began to reflect on everything I’d learn in my history classes up until this point. The main question that I couldn’t shy from was, how did I not learn about these horrific times in our history? Up until watching the documentary, I was never able to grasp why racial segregation still existed so many years after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. …show more content…

As I alluded to earlier, I wasn’t aware of certain terms that came to fruition during this time period. A term that the documentary introduced me to is “convict leasing.” The documentary explained that convict leasing began because replacements were needed in the labor force, since blacks were no longer slaves and had been freed. In order to find replacements, the criminal justice system along with white business owners essentially worked together to convict and sentence blacks to petty offenses. The most discussed offense in the documentary was vagrancy. According to the documentary, vagrancy offenses were the result of unemployed blacks. Because they were unemployed, they were arrested and later on fined as being a vagrant. Since these blacks were unemployed, they typically didn’t have the necessary funds to payoff the fines, and so they were forced to work to payoff their debt. The language utilized in the 13th Amendment basically stated that convict leasing, or involuntary servitude was applicable in the punishment of a …show more content…

Even though slavery was abolished, informal forms of slavery was still taking place. Blacks were seen more as economic value than they were as a person. Freed men and women whom were guilty of no actual crimes were forced to work without compensation. Forms of punishment that the video referred to include: Whipping, flogged, placed in barracks, chased by bloodhounds, and even death. Until it was abolished, this was legal as long as debt was deemed un-payable. Convict leasing was abolished in Alabama in 1928, yet Franklin Roosevelt didn’t abolish all forms until December 1941.
Between the 1920s-1940s, the documentary stated that 4.8 million blacks in the south were apart of some form of involuntary servitude. On record, there were 9,000 known prisoners who died during this horrific time period. The same gruesome behavior that took place prior to slavery being abolished was still occurring, the south just looked for alternate ways to achieve the same results. Even though blacks may not necessarily be the focal point, there are multiple forms of slavery still occurring today. A primary example would be women being forced into prostitution to pay off

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