Slavery Wasn't Abolished in Actuality Until 1951

I have a lot on my mind. Bill Clinton's, "I never made a racist comment." Geraldine Ferraro's lame notion that if Barack Obama chooses any woman besides Hillary Clinton, it will be an insult to both Hillary Clinton and her supporters. I wrote about that a couple of days ago.

I'm also thinking about Obama's lead in a recent poll with the white working-class. I also wonder how long Pat Buchanan will be treated like a respectable voice on politics, race, and the politics of race. Video on all that below. Perhaps I'll post about that later. And I did see the phallic symbols. And white people don't always "see" racism.

What I know I'll address is this complaint from Republicans that they can't criticize Obama and engage in regular political discussion because any criticism of Obama leads to charges of racism. That complaint is unfounded, and I will certainly take it apart later. But for now, I have another issue on my mind.

What's on my mind is the fact that slavery wasn't really abolished until 1951, when Congress finally made clear that "any form of slavery in the United States was indisputable a crime" (Douglas A Blackmon. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. New York: Doubleday, 2008.) The forms of slavery engaged in at the time, and by slavery I mean illegally enforced involuntary servitude, included peonage and the chain gangs. It included the illegal use of the justice system whereby a black man would be charged with some crime he either didn't commit or committed simply by virtue of being black and out in public; then he'd be charged with all kinds of fines he couldn't pay; a white man would pay the fines and have the black man as essentially a slave to work off his "debt." Then the so-called prisoners would be beaten and whipped and forced to live in condemnable conditions all the while chained. If a prisoner died, no one was charged with murder. Even if it were clearly murder.

Then there's the rape and sexual abuse of black women. White men felt access to black women's bodies was a birthright and used it frequently. With their lives being economically dependent on white men and no legal or extralegal recourse, neither the black women nor their families were in a place to fight back much. A preacher was even killed because he encouraged black women to say, "No" (ibid. 243).

Yes, the North had its issues. There were lynchings and redlining. But, there was no slavery. That's why so many African Americans left the South like children leaving school at the end of the year. The "Jim Crow" era would be better called "the age of Neoslavery." That's Blackmon's idea, but I like it.

That may not be of great concern to you. But it's something that always got to me. Before, questions about the Great Migration and the difference between the North and South would essentially end with the notion that Northern whites were equally racist as Southern whites, but on the whole, Northern racism was easier to deal with. But now, I know that Northern racism was easier to deal with because it wouldn't lead to forced labor. Of course, there remained the sexual abuse of domestic workers. But, there was no slavery.

I'll have more about Blackmon's book in the coming days. I don't know if I'll be writing a book review so much as I'll be going about my usual rants with more evidence.