Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

Scipio, born in Africa, was the oldest former enslaved laborer on the Cottingham plantation. An ancestor of Green, Scip was leased by the Cottinghams to Brierfield Iron Works, an ironworks company in Bibb County that was known to brutally punish its leased slaves. After being emancipated, Scip moved a few miles away from his former enslavement site and took the last name Cottinham. He continued working at the Bibb coal furnace, and it was there that he died.

Elisha Cottingham was an Alabama plantation owner. Elisha was deeply Christian, as was his entire family. The Civil War left Elisha and the Cottinghams in economic ruins because most of their equity was in the slaves that abandoned the farm. Elisha feared a future where his former slaves had equal voting rights and no longer lived under white men’s thumb.

John Pace was a white Alabama farmer who paid off the fees of Black men who were usually arrested on false charges in exchange for forcing them to work on his farm. Pace’s farm acquired a reputation for brutally whipping, torturing, and punishing its slaves. As one of the most prominent buyers of Black men, Pace was later tried for his crimes and found guilty. However, he was only required to pay a symbolic fine and allowed to walk free. As such, he continued to enslave men after his conviction.

Roosevelt was president when the US government decided to investigate claims of slavery in the South in 1903. Roosevelt was troubled by the societal gap between white and Black Americans and the country’s failure to live up to its promises after slavery ended. Though he sought advice from prominent Black leaders, Roosevelt exhibited the same paternalistic racism as many white men. He genuinely believed in the superiority of the white race. When it became clear that slavery was widespread in the South, his administration grew weary and stopped looking into the issue.

Booker T. Washington was prominent Black leader who advocated for a moderate position on race relations. Born into slavery and emancipated by Union troops during the Civil War, Washington advised Black people to improve themselves through trade work; he even set up the Tuskegee Institute for this purpose. He encouraged them to accept their status as second-class citizens to white Americans, an attitude that caused him to butt heads with the more progressive Black leader W. E. B. DuBois. Washington was a friendly advisor to President Roosevelt, to the outrage of White Southerners.

DuBois was an Atlanta professor, author, and a progressive Black leader around the turn of the 20th century. He criticized Booker T. Washington’s willingness to accept African Americans’ low social status. DuBois conducted a groundbreaking sociological study into the lives of Black laborers in the South. Because his report was ignored by the federal government, DuBois wrote a novel based on it.

Jones was a federal Alabama judge appointed by Theodore Roosevelt at the suggestion of Booker T. Washington. He was somewhat progressive on the issue of equal citizenship for Black Americans. At first, he aggressively presided over the slavery trials, but he never sentenced anyone to hard jail time. Instead, he only gave them symbolic fines and let them go.

A former preacher, Thomas Dixon Jr. wrote several books that glorified white supremacy and fed into racist stereotypes. His book, The Clansman, idolized the Ku Klux Klan and became very popular. It inspired a play and the movie The Birth of a Nation.