SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME

SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME, the PBS documentary just aired, and if you didn't get a chance to see it, find a way. Based on a book by Douglas A. Blackmon, it explores, and exposes, the history of the ways Southern white power structures were able to maintain a system of slavery after The Civil War and right up until World War Two and FDR's enforcement of the anti-slavery amendment and anti-peonage laws.

With re-enactments and dramatizations of letters and court documents and personal witness from relatives of victims of this post-Civil War form of slavery, and narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, the documentary conforms to a lot of the conventions of this form, but because of the power of the story and the revelatory aspect of the content, which I would guess many people had no idea of (including some of the relatives of the victims of it), this is a very powerful experience. I wouldn't miss it.

I want to thank several friends who alerted me to its airing tonight and to the book it is based on, both among my neighbors in my Jersey town and among old friends farther away. You all were right, it was not to be missed and I'm grateful I didn't.

Here's a link to the author's web page.