C
ClearInsight News

Why is it called slavery by another name?

Author

Sophia Sparks

Published Feb 18, 2026

Why is it called slavery by another name?

Slavery by Another Name began as an article which Blackmon wrote for The Wall Street Journal detailing the use of black forced labor by U.S. Steel Corporation. Seeing the popular response to the article, he began conducting research for a more comprehensive exploration of the topic.

Also know, what does slavery by another name mean?

Slavery by Another Name gives voice to the largely forgotten victims and perpetrators of forced labor and features their descendants living today.

Secondly, what were the practices that resulted in the enslavement of some African American up until WWII? With no means to pay these ostensible “debts,” prisoners were sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries, and farm plantations. Thousands of other African Americans were simply seized by southern landowners and compelled into years of involuntary servitude.

Likewise, people ask, what is slavery defined as?

Slavery, condition in which one human being was owned by another. A slave was considered by law as property, or chattel, and was deprived of most of the rights ordinarily held by free persons.

What was the peonage system?

Peonage, also called debt slavery or debt servitude, is a system where an employer compels a worker to pay off a debt with work. Legally, peonage was outlawed by Congress in 1867.

Who wrote slavery by another name?

Douglas A. Blackmon

How was convict leasing worse than slavery?

Unlike slavery, employers had only a small capitol investment in convict laborers, and little incentive to treat them well. Convict laborers were often dismally treated, but the convict lease system was highly profitable for the states and the employers.

Who were the comers?

John Wallace Comer (13 June 1845 - 20 September 1919) was a businessman, slave owner, mine operator and planter in Alabama during the Reconstruction Era and the early 1900s. The brother of Alabama Governor B. B. Comer, John Wallace Comer operated the Comer family plantation in Barbour County, Alabama.

When did the convict lease system end?

Convict leasing began in Alabama in 1846 and lasted until July 1, 1928, when Herbert Hoover was vying for the White House.

What was the purpose of the convict lease system?

After the Civil War, slavery persisted in the form of convict leasing, a system in which Southern states leased prisoners to private railways, mines, and large plantations. While states profited, prisoners earned no pay and faced inhumane, dangerous, and often deadly work conditions.

What group led the abolition movement?

The abolitionist movement was the social and political effort to end slavery everywhere. Fueled in part by religious fervor, the movement was led by people like Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and John Brown.

What are the 4 types of slavery?

  • Child Sex Trafficking.
  • Bonded Labor or Debt Bondage.
  • Domestic Servitude.
  • Forced Child Labor.
  • Unlawful Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers.

Does slavery still go on today?

Despite the fact that slavery is prohibited worldwide, modern forms of the sinister practice persist. More than 40 million people still toil in debt bondage in Asia, forced labor in the Gulf states, or as child workers in agriculture in Africa or Latin America.
Slavery was abolished in the possessions of the East India Company by the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.

Who ended slavery?

On Jan. 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. This declared “all persons held as slaves … shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." However, slavery was not formally abolished in the U.S. until 1865, after the ratification of the 13th Amendment.

Where did the idea of slavery come from?

Slavery operated in the first civilizations (such as Sumer in Mesopotamia, which dates back as far as 3500 BC). Slavery features in the Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi (c. 1860 BCE), which refers to it as an established institution.

How does modern slavery happen?

Modern slavery takes many forms. The most common are: Human trafficking. The use of violence, threats or coercion to transport, recruit or harbour people in order to exploit them for purposes such as forced prostitution, labour, criminality, marriage or organ removal.

What happened Green Cottenham?

Mr. BLACKMON: Green Cottenham died in 1908, a diseased man, malnourished and sick in a crude hospital at a mine owned by U.S. Steel Corp. at the time.

When did sharecropping become illegal?

The Great Depression, mechanization, and other factors lead sharecropping to fade away in the 1940s.

Do sharecroppers still exist?

Sharecropping was widespread in the South during Reconstruction, after the Civil War. It was a way landowners could still command labor, often by African Americans, to keep their farms profitable. It had faded in most places by the 1940s. But not everywhere.

What characterized the New South?

Alabama, like the rest of the South, experienced drastic economic and social change in the post-Reconstruction, or New South, era. The term "New South" refers to the economic shift from an exclusively agrarian society to one that embraced industrial development.

How did convict leasing impact white workers?

It also greatly reduced state expenses in housing and caring for convicts. For the corporations, convict lease provided droves of cheap, disposable laborers who could be worked to the extremes of human cruelty. Every southern state leased convicts, and at least nine-tenths of all leased convicts were black.

Why did freed slaves turn to sharecropping?

Sharecropping became widespread in the South as a response to economic upheaval caused by the end of slavery during and after Reconstruction. Sharecropping was a way for poor farmers, both white and black, to earn a living from land owned by someone else.

What was the death rates for convicts in the work camps?

Among state prisoners, the annual death rates ranged between 4 and 5 percent.

What gave rights to African Americans during Reconstruction?

The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 freed African Americans in rebel states, and after the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment emancipated all U.S. slaves wherever they were.

Where does the word peonage come from?

Peonage, form of involuntary servitude, the origins of which have been traced as far back as the Spanish conquest of Mexico, when the conquerors were able to force the poor, especially the Indians, to work for Spanish planters and mine operators.