Slavery By Another Name Essay

1108 Words3 Pages

The film “Slavery by another name" is a one and a half hour documentary produced by Catherine Allan and directed by Sam Pollard, and it was first showcased by Sundance Film Festival in 2012. The film is based on Douglas Blackmonbook Slavery by Another Name, and the plot of the film revolves around the history and life of African Americans after Emancipation Proclamation; which was effected by President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, for the purpose of ending slavery of African Americans in the U.S. The film reveals very brutal stories of how slavery of African Americans persisted in through forced labor and cruelty; especially in the American south which continued until the beginning of World War II. The film brings to light one of my upbringing …show more content…

During the period after the emancipation many African Americans are hoping for a better future with no one as their master but themselves, however, according to the documentary their dream is still crushed since even after liberation, as a result of the bad laws from the federal government their lives were filled with forced labor, torture and brutality, poverty and poor living conditions. All this is shown in film. First, after emancipation, federal laws revived slavery into new form. After slaves were freed during post- civil war, the whites especially those in the south faced problems in running their plantations; since there was no free labor force from slaves, and also some whites who had never owned slaves saw the African Americans as undesirable competition. I think the laws enforcements eventually became the method through which slavery of blacks take its new form. Under these new laws, a lot of African Americans were arrested with no reason and were given harsh fines and later they were charged with the costs of own arrests. This is because majority of the Africans were poor and good number of them who were arrested could not afford to pay fines. With no means to pay fines most of the prisoners accumulated debts as a result they were sold a forced labor to industries and farm …show more content…

Many African Americans were forced to live in poverty, because the events of neo-slavery after Post-Civil War, resulted to seemingly unavoidable poverty, given that their economic and social wellbeing were mostly influenced by the decisions of the whites, rather than the their own decisions. Hence, the many blacks become the stagnant component of the United States society; because even though after they gained freedom they were depicted ‘free people’, in reality they were still the same people not free from slavery, as a result most of them languished in poverty. I believe that this actions of enslaving African Americans through this system is what has led to the present state of things whereby many blacks are still poor because just like in the post-civil war times different forms of enslaving blacks have been put in place for example imprisoning through racial profiling and the concentrating of blacks in inner cities where there are not that many resources such as good schools, social facilities and good jobs which leads to crime and wasting of these people and a criminal justice system that seems to work against black

Show More
Related

  • Analysis of The Black Power Mixtape

    603 Words  | 2 Pages

    This documentary not only talks about a significant period in African American and American history; it also gives us a mo...

    Read More

  • The Invisible Cage: Inequality for African Americans

    574 Words  | 2 Pages

    In her article “From America’s New Working Class”, Kathleen R. Arnold makes clear that welfare/workfare recipients are treated like prisoners or second class citizens. Likewise, In Michelle Alexander’s article “The New Jim Crow” she describes how blacks is made criminals by a corrupt criminal justice system. Alexander also points out in her article “The New Jim Crow” that shackles and chains are not the only form of slavery. Furthermore, Alexander states that although America is thought of as the home of the free, blacks are more likely than any other race to be arrested, unemployed, or denied housing. Freedom is not an absolute value in America, as slavery is more ubiquitous than ever.

    Read More

  • Were Black Americans Made Free and Equal by the Abolition of Slavery, 1865-1915?

    677 Words  | 2 Pages

    While the formal abolition of slavery, on the 6th of December 1865 freed black Americans from their slave labour, they were still unequal to and discriminated by white Americans for the next century. This ‘freedom’, meant that black Americans ‘felt like a bird out of a cage’ , but this freedom from slavery did not equate to their complete liberty, rather they were kept in destitute through their economic, social, and political state.

    Read More

  • Racial Domination, Racial Progress By Matthew Desmond And Mustafa Emirbayer

    1425 Words  | 3 Pages

    For more than two hundred years, a certain group of people lived in misery; conditions so inhumane that the only simile that can compare to such, would be the image of a caged animal dying to live, yet whose live is perished by the awful chains that dragged him back into a dark world of torture and misfortune. Yes, I am referring to African Americans, whose beautiful heritage, one which is full of cultural beauty and extraordinary people, was stained by the privilege given to white men at one point in the history of the United States. Though slavery has been “abolished” for quite some years; or perhaps it is the ideal driven to us by our modern society and the lines that make up our constitution, there is a new kind of slavery. One which in

    Read More

  • Slavery: A Cycle of Victimization

    560 Words  | 2 Pages

    Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slavery was cruelty at its best. Slavery is described as long work days, a lack of respect for a human being, and the inability for a man or a woman to have gainful employment. The slaves were victimized the most for obvious reasons. Next on the list would be the families of both the slave and slave owners. At the bottom of the list would be the slave owners. Slavery does in fact victimize slaves, slave owner and their families by repeating the same cycle every generation.

    Read More

  • Simple Justice

    1367 Words  | 3 Pages

    This story was set in the deep south were ownership of African Americans was no different than owning a mule. Demonstrates of how the Thirteenth Amendment was intended to free slaves and describes the abolitionist’s efforts. The freedom of African Americans was less a humanitarian act than an economic one. There was a battle between the North and South freed slaves from bondage but at a certain cost. While a few good men prophesied the African Americans were created equal by God’s hands, the movement to free African Americans gained momentum spirited by economic and technological innovations such as the export, import, railroad, finance, and the North’s desire for more caucasian immigrants to join America’s workforce to improve our evolving nation. The inspiration for world power that freed slaves and gave them initial victory of a vote with passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. A huge part of this story follows the evolution of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment more acts for civil rights.

    Read More

  • Differences Between The Nuremberg Laws And The Jim Crow Laws

    1158 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout the 1800’s and 1900’s in the southern region of the United States, all African Americans were treated like they didn’t belong here in this country. Almost all white males that were wealthy owned a plethora of African Americans as their personal slaves. They would work days upon days for their respective owners. Whether it was picking cotton or doing whatever their owner asked of them, they were pretty much treated like they were anything but a human being. They were treated poorly and their living conditions can probably be considered as inhumane. The quality of life for the two races in our beloved country had a huge difference. This era was more commonly known as the Jim Crow era. “Jim Crow describes the segregationist social system

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of Reparation

    1065 Words  | 3 Pages

    The descendants of the slaves here in America are showered with government aid David Horowitz states that “trillions of dollars in transfer payments have been made to African-Americans in the form of welfare benefits and racial preferences in contracts, job placements and educational admissions”. Since the 60’s, acts and bills have been passed to return justice to the African-American community. For example the passing of the Civil Rights Act presented by President Lyndon B. Johnson. banned the discrimination of race. In addition, Horowitz asks “if trillion-dollar restitutions and the rewriting of American law is not enough to achieve healing, what is?”. Meaning the government has worked to better the social lives of African-Americans as well as economically.

    Read More

  • Essay On Slave Trade

    1329 Words  | 3 Pages

    Since the beginning of slavery in the America, Africans have been deemed inferior to the whites whom exploited the Atlantic slave trade. Africans were exported and shipped in droves to the Americas for the sole purpose of enriching the lives of other races with slave labor. These Africans were sold like livestock and forced into a life of servitude once they became the “property” of others. As the United States expanded westward, the desire to cultivate new land increased the need for more slaves. The treatment of slaves was dependent upon the region because different crops required differing needs for cultivation. Slaves in the Cotton South, concluded traveler Frederick Law Olmsted, worked “much harder and more unremittingly” than those in the tobacco regions.1 Since the birth of America and throughout its expansion, African Americans have been fighting an uphill battle to achieve freedom and some semblance of equality. While African Americans were confronted with their inferior status during the domestic slave trade, when performing their tasks, and even after they were set free, they still made great strides in their quest for equality during the nineteenth century.

    Read More

  • the development of slavery in America

    1202 Words  | 3 Pages

    Colonist started to import slaves from South America in hopes that they would live longer and be more manageable to control. The slaves that were imported were trained past their first year of slavery, so that they would not die as fast. The first imported slaves came to America in the early 17th century. When they received the slaves they found out some of them were baptized, and were under the Christian religion. So they could not be treat as slaves under the religion so they were turned into indentured servants. There were very few vague laws on slavery, but it was always a permanent servitude. At first slaves had limited right, and were aloud to own land, after their period of slavery was over. They were allowed to marry and have children. The slaves kids that were born while they were enslaved were not consider to be slaves, but to be free under the law.

    Read More

  • The Emancipation Proclamation

    956 Words  | 2 Pages

    Pruitt, Sarah “5 Things You May Not Know About Lincoln, Slavery, and Emancipation” History. Readers Companion to American History. 2012. web. 30 October 2013.

    Read More

  • African American History in America

    1055 Words  | 3 Pages

    In From Slavery to Freedom (2007), it was said that “the transition from slavery to freedom represents one of the major themes in the history of African Diaspora in the Americas” (para. 1). African American history plays an important role in American history not only because the Civil Rights Movement, but because of the strength and courage of Afro-Americans struggling to live a good life in America. Afro-Americans have been present in this country since the early 1600’s, and have been making history since. We as Americans have studied American history all throughout school, and took one Month out of the year to studied African American history. Of course we learn some things about the important people and events in African American history, but some of the most important things remain untold which will take more than a month to learn about.

    Read More

  • Slavery by Another Name

    584 Words  | 2 Pages

    For most American’s especially African Americans, the abolition of slavery in 1865 was a significant point in history, but for African Americans, although slavery was abolished it gave root for a new form of slavery that showed to be equally as terrorizing for blacks. In the novel Slavery by Another Name, by Douglas Blackmon he examines the reconstruction era, which provided a form of coerced labor in a convict leasing system, where many African Americans were convicted on triumphed up charges for decades.

    Read More

  • Modern Day Slavery Essay

    1371 Words  | 3 Pages

    The word “slavery” brings back horrific memories of human beings. Bought and sold as property, and dehumanized with the risk and implementation of violence, at times nearly inhumane. The majority of people in the United States assumes and assures that slavery was eliminated during the nineteenth century with the Emancipation Proclamation. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth; rather, slavery and the global slave trade continue to thrive till this day. In fact, it is likely that more individuals are becoming victims of human trafficking across borders against their will compared to the vast number of slaves that we know in earlier times. Slavery is no longer about legal ownership asserted, but instead legal ownership avoided, the thought provoking idea that with old slavery, slaves were maintained, compared to modern day slavery in which slaves are nearly disposable, under the same institutionalized systems in which violence and economic control over the disadvantaged is the common way of life. Modern day slavery is insidious to the public but still detrimental if not more than old American slavery.

    Read More

  • Research Paper On Modern Slavery

    1141 Words  | 3 Pages

    India is hiding a dark secret, one that has haunted them for centuries; India is the world’s leader in slavery. Slavery is a problem that ravages India; with 14 million in forced servitude today India is the country with the highest number of modern slaves. There are many different causes and forms of slavery that affect India. They also have laws and regulations prohibiting the act, but slavery still happens. Even though what they are doing now isn’t working there are things we can do to change the future.

    Read More

More about Slavery By Another Name Essay

Open Document