#peonage

Slavery didn't really end until like 1950's in Alabama.

Peonage was another form of Slavery, which exchange, something as simple as giving someone a sandwich, and you would have to work off that payment, in a endless cycle of debt. Equals slave for life, research peonage and alabama.

FRED AND OSCAR DIAL were white brothers with a system. They paid the fines of Africans jailed for minor offenses and pressed them into service on their plantations. They worked the Africans hard, disciplined them harshly, and beat those who resisted. Unfortunately for the future of their system, they beat Herbert "Monk" Thompson so badly that he died.

That death triggered an investigtion and prosecution by Frank M. Johnson Jr., then the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. The year was 1954, almost a century after the infamous Dred Scott decision in which the Supreme Court declared that Africans were "beings of an inferior order . . . so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

When Johnson rested his case, the defense called witness after witness to testify to the good character of the Dials. Cross-examining one, an old farmer, Johnson asked casually if the Dials were known to beat the Africans who worked for them. The witness replied, also casually: "Yes, I've heard about that."

The chief attorney for the defense called a recess, followed the witness into the corridor, and exploded in fury. He had asked earlier whether the character witnesses knew anything bad about the Dials; why hadn't the old man told him? The farmer was upset: "But Mr. Beddow, whupping a nigger ain't bad in Sumter County.

For whites in the South, that promise was a threat, and white Southern politicians responded accordingly. Judge Rives visited Senator Lister Hill of Alabama after the latter signed the Southern Manifesto of 1956. ("We commend the motives of those states which have declared the intention to resist forced integration by any lawful means.") Hill had until then managed relative moderation on racial issues, but explained that his signature was a matter of political reality. "Well, Lister," Rives said, "I think I understand it now. You fellas have just risen above principle."

George Wallace in Alabama and Ross Barnett in Mississippi "rose above principle" with vengenance. In the battles over integrating the University of Mississippi, Barnett, then the governor of Mississippi, pushed the Fifth Circuit into initiating criminal contempt proceedings against him -- the most forceful and direct confrontation between state and federal governments in this century. Meanwhile, George Wallace continued a posture of defying the federal courts -- in particular, his law school classmate, Judge Johnson (Wallace called him a "integrating, scalawagging, carpetbagging, race-mixing, bald-faced liar") -- that would serve him politically for the better part of two decades.

When did slavery really end in the United States?

When did slavery really end in the United States?

Slavery v. Peonage

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.  However, after Reconstruction, many Southern black men were swept into peonage though different methods, and the system was not completely eradicated until the 1940s.

In some cases, employers advanced workers some pay or initial transportation costs, and workers willingly agreed to work without pay in order to pay it off. Sometimes those debts were quickly paid off, and a fair wage worker/employer relationship established.

In many more cases, however, workers became indebted to planters (through sharecropping loans), merchants (through credit), or company stores (through living expenses). Workers were often unable to re-pay the debt, and found themselves in a continuous work-without-pay cycle.

Many people think of slavery as something which happened long ago. It isn’t there are enslaved people around the world now. The last slave freed in America in 1942 is the official legal definition of a chattel slave freed via acts under FDR. Roosevelt brought this in so as to differentiate the US from the Empire of Japan and its abhorrent acts in China during WW2. Yes, I know that most people think that slavery in the US ended due to the Civil War in 1865 but this is not really true.

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Slavery In America Did Not End With The Civil War

Abraham Lincoln was murdered by a Southern assassin John Wilkes Booth and Lincoln’s vice president was a Southern Democrat Andrew Johnson. Johnson undermined much of what Lincoln established via reparation legislation for freed slaves. The Southern states soon brought in Black Codes, which criminalised the lives and behaviours of Black people in Southern America. Thus, any misdemeanour like vagrancy, breaking a work contract, gaming, trespassing, having sex with a white person, drinking alcohol, and any other made-up charge was punishable by hard labour. The judges, sheriffs, and deputies were all white folk, usually plantation owners or employed by them. There were no police, as we know them today. The large fines were then paid by a plantation owner or mining corporation and a peonage arrangement established where the Black ‘so-called’ offender could work off the fine. Legal fees would be added to the amount and this would result in the Black man or woman being enslaved via debt for years. “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.  However, after Reconstruction, many Southern black men were swept into peonage though different methods, and the system was not completely eradicated until the 1940s.” - (https://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/peonage/#:~:text=Peonagealsocalleddebtslavery,offadebtwithwork.)

Photo by Gotta Be Worth It on Pexels.com Thus, slavery moved into the hands of the Southern state governments and into their penal servitude systems. 800, 000 Black former slaves were caught up in this way to feed the Southern economies. 4 million slaves in the South were freed, but what did that freedom really look like? Unlike in former slave times, these Black men were no longer valued as chattels worth hundreds of dollars, now they were valued far less as criminals and were treated appallingly, often dying in quick order from being worked to death. The Ku Klux Klan formed around this period after the Civil War and they would terrorise freed Black individuals and families. Lynchings were so popular in the Southern states that they would be announced in newspapers as family entertainments and attract large crowds. Black victims would be hanged and burnt in many instances to public acclaim, as white families picnicked with their children. It is difficult to grasp how vile these white Americans were and are. This manipulation of the judicial and political systems has continued largely unabated to this present day in some form or another. The US federal government has at various times grappled with theses Southern states to lessen their overt racism and exploitation of Black people.

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Black American Slaves Freed & Then Demonised As Criminals

Around the turn of the twentieth century is when the media campaigns to paint Black freed slaves as immoral and criminal kicked off in America. The Black Codes, which made almost all behaviour criminal for Blacks in the South would provide statistical evidence for this. Thus, the South had lost the actual Civil War fought over slavery but in the post war years would win the PR battle. Southern gentlemen vs uncouth criminal Blacks would become the meme of the post war period. This would carry on into the War On Drugs in the latter half of the 20C, where African Americans would be characterised in the media as drug pushing and addicted dangerous criminals. Black people in America have copped a sustained barrage of bad press and deliberate government and institutional innuendo over centuries. Slaves for centuries, then treated despicably in peonage and servitude, whilst painted as immoral and criminal in character. The miracle is that via incredible resilience millions of African Americans have become wonderful human beings despite the loathsome actions of many whites and their laws and corporations.

Photo by Sharefaith on Pexels.com War On Drugs Depicted African Americans As Gangsters & Drug Addicts Yes, there are criminal African American individuals, as there are whites’ of the same ilk. However, if you wilfully suppress sections of society economically over generations what do you expect is going to happen. If you treat people like shit, then, it is unlikely they are going to thank you for it. African Americans, as a group identity, have exhibited an amazingly indomitable spirit over the centuries. They have triumphed against the odds and the battle is not over yet. The descendants of these abhorrent Southern ‘gentlemen’ are still at it in their overt and covert wars against Black Americans. This is the trouble with families and traditions, where you get generations hogging the trough. Power has been in the hands of these awful Americans for way too long. Gerrymanders and anti-voting laws are still rife in the South today. Indeed, this is why, via the presidential college system, you can get someone like Donald J Trump winning the 2016 election despite losing the overall vote to Hillary Clinton. American democracy is not truly representative in its current guise.

Joe Biden was born in 1942, which was the year that the last official slave was freed in the United States of America. Black men in America were supposed to get the vote in 1870. In reality, due to the litany of poll taxes, literacy laws and other vile misuses of power by the states it wasn’t until 1965 that many African Americans could get the vote. That is only some 50+ years ago and it takes a long time for the effects of change to manifest in the lives of ordinary folk. The gross behaviours and attitudes of white America in large parts of the country are not ancient history by any means. The odds are still stacked in the favour of white folk in America, with generations of judicial and economic misuses of power marginalising African Americans. Leaders like Ron DeSantis in Florida are a despicable illustration of the extent of this ongoing racial battle in America. 81 year later and the nation is still denying its true character and making things harder for African Americans.

How The 13th Amendment Perpetuated Slave Labor

(This was posted on Facebook by Dave Danze, who I don’t know, and reposted by my friend David McFarlane. What is interesting to me is that I DID learn about this episode in American history in high school and again in college but, for some reason, I seem to have “forgotten” about it over the intervening years. This happens because we don’t continually review the background knowledge that we…