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

The act of being whipped serves as a through line from plantation-era slavery to the era of forced convict labor. While slaves were punished with whippings on plantations, whipping eventually represents the everyday brutality of the new system of slavery. Because convict laborers were seen as easily replaceable, they could be whipped dozens of times for minor infractions without worry for their physical ability to continue working.

A prominent component of white mythology was the good versus bad Black man stereotype. Good Black men submit to their status as second-class citizens while bad Black men—called cigarette dudes—were independent and even intelligent. Cigarette dudes symbolized the rebellious, forward-thinking spirit of African Americans—a spirit that demanded equal rights and challenged the white-dominant hierarchy.

President Roosevelt swore he would instill a “square deal” for African Americans because they had not received full legal rights as citizens. This rhetoric provoked intense opposition from White Southerners, ultimately leading Roosevelt to back off his pledge. The “square deal” represented many things: the tense struggle between white Northerners and Southerners; the difficulty of challenging the status quo; and the North’s failure to provide for Black Americans the way it promised.

Irony is a recurring motif in Slavery by Another Name. Blackmon points out irony on the large and small scale in multiple chapters. One outstanding example is the way Southerners fought to keep Black people from enjoying the very freedoms American fought for when it claimed its independence from British rule. Another subtler irony is the fact that Brierfield, a major site of production for the Confederate Army, became home to many former slaves. Legal ironies were commonplace, from Roosevelt pardoning defendants convicted in the very slavery trials he advocated for to James Fletcher Turner winning a seat in the House of Representatives despite being found guilty of holding slaves. Of course, the deepest irony came from Judge Jones’s creation of a loophole that allowed forced labor to proceed legally, all because Jones believed no one was corrupt enough to approve it.

Even opposition to the forced labor system and racism came about ironically. It took the death of James Knox, a white man sold into enslaved labor, for the public to acknowledge the wrongs of slavery. Similarly, the federal government was only motivated to end neo-slavery when it became an embarrassment that its enemies could exploit during World War II.

Referred to as both the “race question” and the “Negro question,” it is, essentially, the question of how white people—in both the North and South—should treat Black people. It represents the cultural and philosophical divides between the North and the South that lingered after the Civil War. The South was initially infuriated that the North continued to poke its head into Southern racial affairs, including the question of slavery. But despite some attempts by white Northerners like President Roosevelt and white Southerners like Attorney General Reese to ensure Black Americans received equal rights, white Southerners largely treated Black people however they wanted. For these white men, the answer to the race question was to return African Americans to their previous enslaved status.

Although certain not the only area in this state with widespread forced labor, Tallapoosa County in Alabama became the geographic manifestation of slavery in the South due to the infamous trials of Pace, Turner, and Cosby. Blackmon writes:

The county, with its exotic Choctaw Indian name meaning “pulverized rock,” and the image of John Pace, a brutish farmer from the backcountry, became the only enduring symbol of the peonage cases—even as hundreds and then thousands of other incidents emerged in parts of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana (278).