Slavery By Another Name

In this book, the author discovered that many historians believed that the practice of leasing convicts of the South was an abuse to the African Americans. Even though many see as it was just one of the many things that occurred in the large sweep of the racial evolution of the South. The cruel and brutal punishments toward the blacks was unjustified.

The case of Green Cottenham was the central event of this book. In his case, author found out many problems that happen to African Americans after the Civil War, especially the force labor and leasing black prisoner system. These were operated by southern state governments, whites, and large corporations.

After Civil War, slaves were free. When the U.S congress passed its first Civil Right Act, the African Americans had the right to vote. They can live as full citizens, such as, they could have their own properties, black children could go to school to gain knowledge, and they can have their own jobs,even they had rights to gain the political positions. Everything was sounding great, but in the dark side, many blacks returned to their slave life in another form. In most of the southern states, county sheriffs and their deputies received no regular salaries. So, everyone who brought to the court need to pay the fees to these officers. Instead of the slave owners, the sheriffs, and many state governments in the South were the people who have full control of these prisoners.

Green Cottenham was arrested by the sheriff of Shelby county, Alabama. He had committed no true crime just like other black prisoners. They usually found guilty by some silly reasons, such as, changing jobs without permission, vagrancy, riding goods trucks without a ticket, looking at white women an...

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...onable thinker. He had confident to make the gap between the conditions of African American and White American disappear. But everything was not as easy as he thought. Everything was different from the promises made to African Americans at the end of slavery.

“Age of Neoslavery” was a shameful chapter in American History. Most of black prisoners had committed no true crime. They did not have any power to defend themselves. They did not have money to hire a lawyer to go to the court. They had no other choice but to surrender. Their lives were totally controlled by other people. One reason that caused it happen was black people were poor; another reason could be whites in the southern states thought blacks were parts of their properties, and after Civil War they no longer belong to them. They could not accept the facts of African Americans who live as a full citizen.