Summary Of Douglas A. Blackmon's Slavery By Another Name

In Slavery by Another Name, Douglas A. Blackmon delivers a different argument in every chapter, while keeping his initial argument that the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War did not end slavery. The peonage system was illegal, however, the law was manipulated in order for black convicts to work without pension. Blackmon has multiple evidence in his arguments, such as when multiple black allies, such as W.E.B. Dubois, Reese, and Judge Jones tried to prove peonage was illegal, but police department and judges worked together to falsely accuse African Americans of petty crimes or crimes they never did. They were contracted to work without a fair trail and companies signed leases that forced convicts to work for a certain amount of time.

The novel covered so much that high school history textbooks never went into why America has never fully recovered from slavery and why systems of oppression still exists. After reading this novel, I understand why African Americans are still racially profiled and face prejudice that does not compare to any race living in America. The novel left a mixture of frustration and anger because it is difficult to comprehend how heartless people can be. This book has increased my interests in politics as well and increased my interest to care about what will affect my generation around the world. Even today, inmates in Texas prisons are still forced to work without compensation because peonage is only illegal for convicts. Blackmon successfully emerged the audience in the book by sharing what the book will be like in the introduction. It was a strange method since most would have expected for this novel to be a narrative, but nevertheless, the topic of post Civil War slavery has never been discussed before. The false façade of America being the land of the free and not confronting their errors is what leads to the American people to question their integrity of their own