[Peace-discuss] 5 Myths re Why the South Seceded (James Loewen) wall

[C. G. Estabrook]

"[Much of the post-Civil War history of African-Americans] remains generally 
unknown. It is, of course, known that slaves were formally freed during the 
American Civil War, and that after ten years of relative freedom, the gains were 
mostly obliterated by 1877 as Reconstruction was brought to an end.

"But the horrifying story is only now being researched seriously, most recently 
in a study called 'Slavery by another name' by Wall Street Journal editor 
Douglas Blackmon. His work fills out the bare bones with shocking detail, 
showing how after Reconstruction African-American life was effectively 
criminalized, so that black males virtually became a permanent slave labor 
force. Conditions, however, were far worse than under slavery, for good 
capitalist reasons. Slaves were property, a capital investment, and were 
therefore cared for by their masters. Those criminalized for merely existing are 
similar to wage laborers, in that the masters have no responsibility for them, 
except to make sure that enough are available. That was, in fact, one of the 
arguments used by slave owners to claim that they were more moral than those who 
hired labor. The argument was understood well enough by northern workers, who 
regarded wage labor as preferable to literal slavery only in that it was 
temporary, a position shared by Abraham Lincoln among others.

"Criminalized black slavery provided much of the basis for the American 
industrial revolution of the late 19th and early 20th century. It continued 
until World War II, when free labor was needed for war industry. During the 
postwar boom, which relied substantially on the dynamic state sector that had 
been established under the highly successful semi-command economy of World War 
II, African-American workers gained a certain degree of freedom for the first 
time since post-Civil War Reconstruction. But since the 1970s that process is 
being reversed, thanks in no small measure to the 'war on drugs,' which in some 
respects is a contemporary analogue to the criminalization of black life after 
the Civil War -- and also provides a fine disciplined labor force, often in 
private prisons, in gross violation of international labor regulations..."