Slavery by Another Name
For a period of nearly 80 years between the civil war and WWII Black Southerners we no longer slaves but they were neither free. In one of the most shameful and little known chapters in American history, generations of Black Southerners were forced to labor against their will. White Southerners wanted to put Blacks into a state that was close to slavery they possibly could to keep blacks “in their places”. They old south that was quickly becoming the new south could not proceed without the work of African American; for white southerners it was like having something in the pass for free (labor) and in the present have to pay for it but do not want to pay for it. So then entering the system of exploitation of power, forced labor and brutality against those of color.
What happened in that period of time is not imaginable to most Americans today. The debts of poverty of African American.; The inability to access the mechanism of wealth, achievements and growth. The ability to have what we call the American dream was stolen form blacks.
With the end of slavery and the passage of the 13th amendment 4 million former slaves embarked on their new lives; their desires were independence from white owners essentially their freedom to move freely. African Americans were willing to work hard for better life. However the end of slavery unleashed a population of people who were ill equipped for freedom in America, which forever crippled the race relations in the US.
The film challenges the American belief that slavery ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. The film tell how as chattel slavery come to an end in the South in 1865 thousands of Blacks were pulled back into forced labor with