What comes to mind when you consider the film’s title, Slavery by Another Name?
Watch Slavery By Another Name video and complete viewing guide questions (quick links below to relevant video clips of 2-3 minutes each, containing historian's commentary on the topics)
What is your initial reaction to the film? Did anything in the film surprise you?
Why isn't the history of forced labor more prominently known and discussed? Why are some parts of our history better known than others?
Choose at least TWO of the topics below for your group's discussion.
1. Freedom: “In the five major cotton states of the deep South, nearly half of all capital, nearly half of all investment, was in human beings. So when those human beings were confiscated, when the investment was transferred, in essence, from slaveholders to the people themselves, that meant a huge loss of capital to Southern slaveholders, to the people who controlled the economy of the South.” – James Grossman, scholar
Emancipation turned the former slaveholding world upside down. What do you think life was like for the newly freed slaves? What do you think life was like for the former slaveholders?
What were you taught about the Thirteenth Amendment? Has your understanding of the Thirteenth Amendment changed after viewing the film? If so, how?
At the end of the Civil War there was a rise in white vigilante groups in the South. What role did violence play in limiting the freedoms of blacks? How is violence used today to control groups of people?
Scholar Adam Green notes that, “Reconstruction was an attempt to create a country in which it would be possible to have a biracial and equal citizenship.” In what ways do you think that Reconstruction accomplished this goal and in what ways did it fall short?
After 1874, there wasn’t any sustained federal presence in the South, which meant that African Americans who were trying to embark on their new freedom journey could count on less assistance from the federal government and more animosity from Southern whites. Should the federal government have done more to protect the new freedoms of blacks? Do you believe that the federal government is effective in protecting the rights of all citizens today? Why or why not?
2. Criminalizing African Americans: “So there are many important implications and long-term consequences for this convict leasing system. Not only is it so oppressive, but when you have an overwhelmingly black prison population, it cements that relationship between criminality and race in people’s minds, to the degree that it’s seen as something inherent.” – Mary Ellen Curtin, scholar
By 1890, the South’s state prison population had soared to nearly 19,000 and nearly ninety percent of those incarcerated were African American. What lingering effects could this hold for America now? Do you think there are any contemporary connections between the criminalization of black life and prison population rates?
3. Reconstruction Ends: “It was a crime in the South for a farm worker to walk beside a railroad. It was a crime in the South to speak loudly in the company of white women. It was a crime to sell the products of your farm after dark.” – Douglas A. Blackmon, author of Slavery by Another Name
The end of Reconstruction ushered in oppressive legislation – such as the pig laws and vagrancy codes – that unjustly targeted African Americans. How did these laws criminalize black life and aid in the rise of the convict leasing system? Are there any laws now that you think unfairly target certain groups?
As a result of the vagrancy statutes in Southern states, you could be convicted if you couldn’t prove at any given moment that you were employed. How might this law impact people if it were in effect today?
Once states realized that they could profit legally from leasing convicts, states throughout the South were engaged in some form of leasing convicts to private industry. Do you think Southern states should have profited from leasing convicts? Why or why not? Do you think that states today should profit from the labor of those incarcerated? Why or why not?
4. Forced Labor: “We as convicts, is something like a man drowning. We have bin convicted of felonies, and because of that, we have lost every friend on Earth.” – Ezekial Archey, convict “Negro labor can be made exceedingly profitable in manufacturing iron, and in rolling mills provided [there is] an overseer – a Southern man, who knows how to manage negroes.” – John T. Milner, Southern industrialist
John T. Milner was an engineer and businessman who, in many ways, could be considered the father of Southern industrialization, particularly in the Deep South. But he also held racist and repressive views. Is it ever appropriate to appreciate one’s contribution to society while also holding him or her accountable for wrongdoings? Can you think of any other examples of this dynamic?
Exposés of the convict labor system described it as “worse than slavery.” In what ways was it worse than slavery and in what ways was it similar? Do you think there are any practices today that could be deemed worse than slavery?
Consider the following statement from historian Adam Green and then respond: “And this [convict leasing] system is one that I think in many ways needs to be understood as brutal in a social sense, but fiendishly rational in an economic sense. Because where else could one take a black worker and work them literally to death, after slavery? And when that worker died, one simply had to go and get another convict.”
Chain gangs were another form of forced labor that emerged in the South. Convicts were chained together and used to build roads, railroads and other state-run enterprises, often in horrid conditions. Do you think that prisoners should be used for public works projects? Why or why not?
Sharecropping was a practice in which a sharecropper agreed to farm the land for a percentage of the proceeds of the sale of crop. Workers became indebted to planters through loans with exorbitant interest rates and, unable to repay the debt, found themselves continuously forced to work without pay. What do you think are the lingering effects of sharecropping on families who were trapped for years in the practice?
5. End of Slavery: “When you see how people’s lives were truly stolen from them. Their freedom was taken away. Their fathers or husbands were taken away. You can understand how the difficulties and the disparities would persist for much longer than it seems they should have.” – Susan Burnore, descendant An award-winning exposé published in 1923 of convict leasing in Florida inflamed readers because the victim, twenty-two-year-old Martin Tabert, was white. The outcry over Talbert’s death helped to end state leasing in Florida. What role can media play in bringing attention to wrongdoings? Do you think contemporary media is successful in doing so? Why or why not? Do you think there is more outcry over crimes when the victim is white? If so, how can this inequity change? Scholar Adam Green notes that, “Without the appreciation of this history, you descend into fantasies that black people didn’t deserve equal rights because black people – constitutionally, intellectually, morally – are not the equals of whites, period.” How can not knowing the full story of history aid in fostering attitudes that are shortsighted?