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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBlack People Were Enslaved in the US Until as Recently as 1963
Black People Were Enslaved in the US Until as Recently as 1963
By Rafi Letzter, Staff Writer | February 28, 2018 01:25pm ET
https://www.livescience.com/61886-modern-slavery-united-states-antoinette-harrell.html
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White landowners enslaved black Americans for at least a century after the Civil War.
That's the conclusion of decades of research by historian and genealogist Antoinette Harrell, who described her findings in a series of interviews for Vice published today (Feb. 28). Harrell has uncovered numerous examples of white people in Southern states entrapping black workers into peonage slavery slavery justified and enforced through deceptive contracts and debt, rather than claims of ownership even though peonage was technically outlawed in the United States in 1867, four years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
People enslaved through peonage may not have appeared in any ledgers as belonging to their enslavers, but the experience was indistinguishable in many respects from the brutal practices of the antebellum period. [6 Civil War Myths, Busted]
"I met about 20 people all who had worked on the Waterford Plantation in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana," Harrell told Vice. "They told me they had worked the fields for most of their lives. One way or another, they had become indebted to the plantation's owner and were not allowed to leave the property
At the end of the harvest when they tried to settle up with the owner, they were always told they didn't make it into the black and to try again next year. Every passing year, the workers fell deeper and deeper in debt. Some of those folks were tied to that land into the 1960s."
And Harrell found that the cruelty practiced by modern white enslavers toward the black people they enslaved through peonage was reminiscent of records from the height of chattel slavery. Harrell described the case of Mae Louise Walls Miller, who didn't get her freedom until 1963, when she was about 14. As a child, Miller would get sent up to the landowner's house on the farm where her family was enslaved and "raped by whatever men were present," sometimes alongside her mother.
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RockRaven
(15,105 posts)I'm not certain 1963 is a large enough number...
Marcuse
(7,567 posts)Do I believe Maes family was the last to be freed? No. Slavery will continue to redefine itself for African Americans for years to come. The school to prison pipeline and private penitentiaries are just a few of the new ways to guarantee that black people provide free labor for the system at large. However, I also believe there are still African families who are tied to Southern farms in the most antebellum sense of speaking. If we dont investigate and bring to light how slavery quietly continued, it could happen again.
marble falls
(57,649 posts)even been put into chains yet.
lunatica
(53,410 posts)Its sickening.
marble falls
(57,649 posts)czarjak
(11,346 posts)Racism is dead, right?
marble falls
(57,649 posts)Racism had just gotten polite and quiet and after we elected Barrack Obama it came out of the woodwork with a vengeance.
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)Its direct impact can clearly be seen today.
I dont know how prevalent it is in other states but in Florida we have a small group often referred to as the plantation negro. Im friends with a man being referenced by that term and it is a unique relationship. At every turn he is there to serve and to let you know he understands who is the boss. He tends to the grounds of a drug treatment facility. For that he gets a bed, full bathroom and food. He is not nor has he ever need a drug user, including alcohol. He has always traded his work for the things mentioned above. Its shocking how subservient he is.
It is always Mr. or Ms., maam or sir. Often repeated over and over. Always asks what you need done. Doesnt matter if you are a guest, employee or patient. He only stops during the day to eat and let the people around him know how appreciative he is.
It has been drilled into him that this is his station in life.
And so many people see the word reparations as a non-starter. He is by all accounts a slave with what was once called good owners.
marble falls
(57,649 posts)is an attempt to reinstate the plantation system. Slavery is being resurrected.