I started this current series to discuss what is wrong with our country and what we need to do to fix it. I have since expanded this series to not only include the United States but the rest of the world as well. While I have discussed some of the topics that I will be including in this series, they have been included in other articles. In this series I will concentrate on a single topic. This will also mean that some of the articles may be slightly shorter than my readers have grown accustomed to, however they will still be written with the same attention to detail. This series will have no set number of articles and will continue to grow as I come across additional subjects.

Modern Slavery

A Comprehensive Exploration

In an age characterized by technological marvels and unparalleled connectivity, it’s a staggering and heartbreaking paradox that slavery persists. It might be hard to believe that in this age of enlightenment and progress, such egregious human rights abuses continue to thrive, yet the numbers are sobering. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that more than 49 million individuals today are victims of modern slavery. This figure isn’t just a cold statistic—it represents a vast multitude of personal tragedies, stories of lost freedom, and shattered dreams.

Defining Human Trafficking

Human Trafficking is a term often used to refer to the modern day slave trade. However, the Palermo Protocol, an international legal document, broadens the definition of human trafficking to include all forms of exploitation of humans for sex and labor.

In effect, the broadened definition of human trafficking includes all forms of modern day slavery: 

 “The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.”

 The Protocol further defines exploitation as:

 “At a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.”

Contrary to popular belief, the United States does not limit the definition of human trafficking to the crossing of borders. Rather, simply put, any act in which a trafficker uses force, fraud, or coercion to exploit and profit from the labor or commercial sex of a child or nonconsenting adult, is human trafficking. Then, the U.S. breaks human trafficking  own further into two different forms, forced labor and sex trafficking, which each have different requirements to form a violation of human trafficking. 

Often there is an assumption that human trafficking involves only the sexual slavery of women and girls, but that is incorrect. Human trafficking can happen anywhere, from agricultural fields to restaurants to private homes to child marriage to forcing people to be mules for the drug trade.

Human trafficking exists in virtually every country, and trans-nationally across multiple countries. According to UNICEF USA, “Human trafficking is the 2nd largest criminal industry in the world, reaping an estimated $32 billion in the trade of human beings,” putting it just behind the drug trade. Children, minority communities, and migrants are especially at risk to extreme forms of exploitation, including slavery and trafficking.

The Scale and Scope of Slavery Today

Modern slavery is a hidden crime woven into the fabric of our global society, affecting tens of millions of people and generating billions in illicit profits for traffickers and corporations that benefit from the cheap labor they provide.

• The Numbers: Current estimates suggest that more than 49 million individuals are trapped in various forms of modern slavery worldwide.
  • Forced Labor: Represents about 55% of those enslaved. These individuals are often found in industries demanding manual labor, such as farming, mining, and service industries.
  • Forced Marriage: About 44% are ensnared in marriages against their will.
  • Sex Slavery: 12.5% of the total are coerced into forced commercial sexual exploitation.
  • Children in Bondage: Tragically, 12% of forced labor cases are children.

Modern Slavery’s Resurgence

While slavery is an ancient practice, these modern forces have intensified its prevalence:

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1. Rapid Population Growth

Especially in developing nations, has outstripped economic growth, rendering many vulnerable to exploitation.

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2. Migration

The mass movement of individuals seeking better opportunities has made many susceptible to traffickers posing as job recruiters.

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3. Government Corruption

Without robust governance and policing and frameworks for holding goverments accountable, many regions become breeding grounds for human trafficking and slavery.

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4. Social Discrimination

Inequalities based on race, gender, tribe, or caste can intensify vulnerabilities.

The Many Faces of Modern Slavery

While the term “slavery” may evoke images from centuries past, today’s reality is more multifaceted and insidious than many realize. Forced labor in industries ranging from agriculture to mining, the heinous trade of forced prostitution, the tragedy of child soldiers, and the bonds of forced marriages— are just some manifestations of this modern horror.

Imagine a small room in an urban setting, far removed from the light of day, where young women and even children are traded like commodities. Or consider remote farms where workers toil day in and day out without compensation, under threat of violence. These aren’t scenes from dystopian novels; they’re daily realities for countless victims.

Forced labor

Individuals are coerced to work under the threat of violence or other forms of punishment. They have no option to leave and are often subjected to grueling working conditions. Forced labor is often found in industries such as agriculture, construction, and manufacturing.

Forced labor is any type of work that is performed involuntarily and under the threat of any penalty, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). The Global Slavery Index estimates that there are 24.9 million people trapped in forced labor around the world  and generates huge profits which go directly into the hands of exploiters.

Laborers are often illegally forced into work at the onset. Those who have been exploited through forced labor often enter into work seemingly voluntarily, though a closer look into their circumstances reveals that their agreement to work, or consent, was uninformed; they are predominantly illiterate and innumerate. Laborers will often start work with eight hour days, which quickly turn into fifteen plus hour days. When forced laborers decide they want to leave, they are told they cannot or are threatened with physical violence or other means of intimidation.

One common form of forced labor is known as debt bondage or debt bondage slavery. It works like this: the slave owner starts with offering a loan in the form of literal money, food, medicine needed to survive, or tools to work. The “debt” aspect of debt bondage refers to an illegally high interest rate that laborers either “inherit” from their family members or involuntarily take on when they accept a loan from the slave holder. By establishing an illegally and impossibly high interest rate, slave holders effectively ensure that a person trapped in the cycle of debt bondage can never pay off their “debts,” no matter how many hours they work.

Also, people in debt bondage slavery are not allowed to work for anyone else. Since they don’t get paid by the slaveholder and they are not allowed to earn money any other way, there is literally no way to pay off the debt.  People in debt bondage slavery often do not know this is against the law, and the obligation they feel to repay this bogus debt is one of the things that keeps them trapped.  Slavery expert and Voices4Freedom International Advisory Board Member, Kevin Bales CMG explains, all of these factors form a “chain around the brain” that keeps them enslaved.

Debt Bondage

This is one of the most prevalent forms of modern slavery in some regions. Individuals are forced to work off a loan or debt, but the terms are deceptive and exploitative, often leading to the debt increasing faster than it can be repaid.

Contract Slavery

Unsuspecting individuals are often lured with the promise of lucrative jobs, only to find themselves bound to false employment contracts that demand excessive work hours under inhumane conditions, often with little or no pay.

Sex Trafficking

Individuals, predominantly women and children, are coerced into the sex trade, either through direct force, manipulation, or threats.

Forced Marriage

Individuals, most commonly young women, are tricked or manipulated into forced marriages, leading them to lose their autonomy. They often find themselves in situations where they are subjected to grueling labor and continuous abuse, both physically and psychologically.

Domestic Servitude

This form of slavery sees individuals, often foreign nationals, trapped as household workers. They are usually isolated, forbidden from leaving the homes of their employers, and are subjected to excessive work hours, constant abuse, and exploitation.

Child Labor & Soldiers

Among the most heart-wrenching forms of modern slavery are the forced recruitment of children into conflict and the exploitation of their labor. Stripped of their innocence, these children are made instruments of war or compelled into strenuous labor, often under hazardous conditions.

Definitions and Differentiations

At its core, modern slavery refers to situations where individuals cannot refuse or leave work because of threats, violence, coercion, deception, or abuse of power.
Here are some of its most prevalent forms:

Forced Labor

Definition: A form of slavery where individuals are coerced to work under the threat of violence or other forms of punishment.

Differentiation: Often for no pay or in repayment of a debt, it is prevalent in industries like agriculture, construction, and manufacturing.

Debt Bondage

Also known as Bonded Labor

Definition: A form of slavery where people pledge themselves or their labor against a loan.

Differentiation: This is the world’s most widespread form of slavery, deceptive terms often make it difficult for the debt to be repaid.

Human Trafficking

Definition: Involves the transportation, recruitment, or harboring of people for the purpose of exploitation.

Differentiation: Achieved by means of threat, force, or deception and can lead to various forms of exploitation, such as forced labor or sexual slavery.

Descent-based Slavery

Definition: A form of slavery where people are born into servitude because their ancestors were captured and enslaved.

Differentiation: This type of slavery is inter-generational and often socially sanctioned.

Child Slavery

Definition: A form of slavery where minors are subjected to forced labor, sexual exploitation, or involvement in armed conflicts.

Child slavery is also known as forced child labor, which is defined as work done by children which, as phrased by the ILO, deprives them of “their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to their physical and mental development,”  the latter most of which is often the consequence of an interference or deprivation of schooling. The ILO estimates that one third of the 152 million children forced into child labor  are kept from attending school. Many children are forced to work do so in extremely hazardous and toxic conditions.

Some examples of child slavery include: brick kiln workers, subjected to work in a small space full of dust exceeding 120 degrees fahrenheit; child soldiers, forced to fight and die in guerilla warfare; child marriage, where families exchange their daughter for a dowry due to pressures from poverty, cultural, and religious norms; carpet making, where small, nimble fingers are at a premium. It is also common for child laborers to be trafficked for sex and other forms of labor, and always for profit.

Is all child labor actually slavery? No. If a child is working, either for their family member or for someone else, but still gets to go to school, is treated fairly and paid a fair wage, it is not child slavery. Many people feel strongly that children should not work at all, no matter how well they are treated. This is a separate debate that is not about slavery.

Differentiation: Unlike adult slavery, child slavery involves the exploitation of minors and can take on forms like child labor and child soldiers.

Forced and Early Marriage

Definition: A form of slavery where someone is married against their will and cannot leave the marriage.

Differentiation: Often leading to forced labor, sexual exploitation, and loss of personal freedom, this type of slavery predominantly affects young women and girls.

Modern Slavery Myths and Their Detriments

The battle against modern slavery is often based on deeply entrenched misconceptions. One pervasive myth is that it is a problem confined to impoverished or “third-world” nations. Developed countries are not just passive onlookers but active participants, often acting as destinations for human trafficking, consumers of goods made with forced labor, and profiting extensively from the exploitation of laborers around the world. The underworld of forced labor and exploitation doesn’t respect national borders.

Another misconception is that slavery always involves physical shackles. In reality, a victim might be bound by psychological chains, manipulated by debt bondage, or living under threats of violence to themselves or their loved ones.

Such misunderstandings are more than mere ignorance; they’re detrimental to the anti-slavery cause. When we misdiagnose the problem, we inadvertently misdirect resources, efforts, and advocacy. When society underestimates the scale and complex nature of the problem, efforts to combat it can be misplaced or insufficient.

Causes: Understanding the Roots

Economic Disparities

In a world where wealth is unequally distributed, many are vulnerable to offers of better-paying jobs in foreign lands, only to find themselves in exploitative conditions.

Lack of Education

An educated individual, cognizant of their rights, is less susceptible to traffickers’ deceit.

Systemic Corruption

In areas where officials turn a blind eye for a bribe, the tendrils of slavery grow unchecked.

Conflict and Political Unrest

War-torn regions are breeding grounds for various forms of slavery, from child soldiers to forced labor.

Migration and Statelessness

People displaced by conflict, those deprived of citizenship, and the many who migrate for economic opportunity are often unable to access basic rights, social services, and the protection of the law increasing their vulnerability to slavery.

Slavery’s Global Geography

Though it’s a global issue, certain regions are notorious hotbeds for various forms of modern slavery. The vast and densely populated Asia-Pacific region is home to over half of the global enslaved population. From sweatshops in cities to remote farms, exploitation is rife.

Africa, with its many conflict zones, witnesses a range of slavery forms, from child soldiers to forced labor in mines. Europe and Central Asia aren’t immune either, with human trafficking for forced labor and sexual exploitation being significant concerns.

In the Americas, though the numbers might be comparatively lower, instances of forced labor, especially among migrant workers, and human trafficking for sexual exploitation are alarmingly prevalent.

A Dark Economy: Slavery’s Role in Global Trade

Many might wonder: “How do I relate to all of this?” The sad truth is that the global economy, driven by consumer demand, plays a significant role in perpetuating slavery. That smartphone you hold might have components sourced from mines where forced labor is rampant. The coffee you savor every morning might come from plantations where workers live in conditions indistinguishable from slavery.

1. Agriculture

Many products, from coffee to cotton, have forced labor in their supply chains.

2. Construction

Rapid urbanization in countries like Qatar, with massive infrastructure projects, has seen an influx of exploited migrant workers.

3. Domestic Work

Many are trapped in private homes, invisible to the public eye.

4. Mining

Precious metals and gems, crucial to the electronics we use and jewelry we buy, often have a dark history.

Modern Slavery & Environmental Sustainability

An increase in environmental protection regulations doesn’t translate to a more protected earth. Rather, environmentally destructive practices continue illegally with slave labor. Slavery and environmental damage are inextricably related and their erradication is tied together. To end environmental destruction, we have to end slavery.

Modern Slavery in Africa, India and the United States

Nations throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia represent the highest rates of slavery. However, modern day slavery is also present in developed countries including the United States.

Most people around the world engage with slavery every day without realizing it. How is that? Slavery exists in the chain of production of nearly all laptops and mobile phones, and a lot of apparel, fish, coffee, chocolate, and jewelry. Most products made in compliance with ethical labor (and environmental) standards are far more expensive to consumers. Unfortunately, consumers are often tempted to choose the cheapest product, regardless of who is exploited as a result.

Modern Slavery in India

According to the Global Slavery Index, there were an estimated 7,989,000 people enslaved in India in 2018. Forced labor, child exploitation, trafficking and slavery are all criminalized by the Indian government. However, certain forms of slavery such as child marriage are permitted, so long as it doesn’t involve kidnapping. Similarly, there are no formal laws against children fighting in armed conflicts.

India is the world’s largest granite producer, having produced 35,342 million tons in 2013.  In 2017 India made $738,731,000 in profits from exporting Granite, Basalt and Sandstone.  However, the markup is incredible. While granite countertops run from $2,000 to $8,000, the price Indian exporters charge for red granite for example is just $5 per $15, or about $100 for a full granite kitchen.

To expose granite quarries, entire forests, along with their soil, are done away with. And once the quarry has been worked out and all the granite has been extracted, what remains is an abandoned wasteland, useless as forest or farmland.  Because granite has to be removed from quarries in large thin slabs, one can’t use dynamite or bulldozers to speed up the process; rather, people have to go in with drills and chisels, hammers and crowbars to gently work the granite out of the ground. And the most cost effective labor force, slavery, is put to work. Bonded labor slavery is the name of the game here.

Forced sexual exploitation is another emerging trend across India’s open and unmanned international borders. In 2016, 126 young females were trafficked into the northeastern state of Assam. They were lured in by traffickers offering them the promise of a good job, but were then forced into sexual slavery. In another example, Nepali women, who are highly valued in India where they are seen as very beautiful, are lured or traded across the border into sexual slavery. If they are ever able to attain their freedom, they usually cannot return home to Nepal because they have brought shame to their families — their families will be kicked out of their homes and villages as a result, so the enslaved women are trapped.

Modern Slavery in the United States

The same tactics of force, fraud, and coercion that are used to exploit people around the world are also used in the United States. Of every 1,000 people in the United States, 1.3 are living in modern slavery. Modern slavery is seen in jobs like domestic work; agriculture and farm work; traveling sales crews; restaurant or food services; and health and beauty services. Up to 30 percent of farmworker families are living below the federal poverty line, experiencing situations of modern slavery where they are held against their will, through the use or threat of violence, and forced to work for little or no money.  Thus, the fruits, vegetables, and meats we consume are often the product of slave labor happening in the United States.

Agricultural slavery is concentrated around the U.S. borders, where predominantly people of color are forced to work through methods of coercion and threats of physical or sexual violence and deportation. These laborers are given no pay, or only enough pay to allow them to keep themselves from starving, so they can keep working.

Women and children, in addition to men, can be trapped into forced labor. Though all genders can experience sexual violence in their workplace, women in forced labor are more likely to be victims of sexual exploitation. In effect, sexual exploitation enters into all forms of slavery.

Consumers in the United States buy into slavery every day. The United States imports over $144 billion dollars worth of products created by forced labor or at-risk populations, more than any other country in the world. 

Modern Slavery in Africa

Slavery is so widespread in Africa that almost every product produced through slavery can be traced at one part or another back to the continent. According to GSI, 7.6 of every 1,000 people in the entire continent of Africa were living in modern day slavery in 2018. The same study reveals that some of the most common forms of slavery in Africa are forced marriage (with 4.8 victims per 1,000 people) and forced labor (with 2.8 victims per 1,000 people). It is estimated that there are 400,000 people experiencing sexual exploitation.

The reach of modern day slavery is widespread and pervasive. Slavery exists in every country in one way or another. With the realities of mass global trade and commerce, as long as slavery still exists in any country, it is inevitable that products made by forced labor enter into the global mainstream economy.

What Causes Modern Day Slavery?

 We at Voices4Freedom know that to achieve our goal of eradicating modern slavery in our lifetime, we must keep in mind what causes it. It begins with degrading the value of human life. A lethal combination of overpopulation, poverty and corruption devalues and dehumanizes entire populations of people – making their lives “cheap” and “disposable.” This opens up the possibility of exploitation with no regard to human rights.

Corruption and apathy play big roles in why a government may remain complicit in the fight against slavery. Powerful entities that profit from modern day slavery often pressure and bribe governments and law enforcement so that they can continue exploiting without repurcusions. Many governments perpetuate the issue by dismissing the reality of slavery in their country. A new study conducted by the University of Nottingham’s Rights Lab revealed that 94 countries have no criminal law against slavery.

The hidden nature of modern day slavery presents many obstacles. What may look like a legitimate job or enterprise could in fact be debt bondage slavery, forced labor or one of the many different types of modern day slavery. Without the right knowledge and toolset, modern day slavery can exist right under our noses – even in our own communities. Some governments argue that their inaction stems from an inability, usually due to a lack of resources, to identify where or how this problem is occuring. Likewise, people who are enslaved may not be able to even recognize that they are being exploited. They may believe the terms of their employment are legitimate and don’t recognize the methods of force, fraud or coercion that were used to enslave them.

Racism, xenophobia, climate change, and civil unrest all perpetuate pre-existing vulnerabilities and create new ones which increase the potential for exploitation. In the case of climate refugees and other refugees, slave holders are tricking these victims into slavery in exchange for their relocation.

The structural and cultural racism which have existed throughout history are still at play in modern day slavery in the obvious, and insidious, ways. More obviously, minority groups and vulnerable people have continued to be targeted as victims of modern day slavery. However, even the popular anti-modern day slavery efforts usually have an element of structural and cultural racism, in the form of white savior complex. When organizations “helicopter in” for “rescue missions,” such efforts rarely address the factors which make people vulnerable to modern day slavery in the first place. Sustainable freedom requires a rights education, vocational skills training, a psychological healing, and empowerment to believe in their right to be free.

Charting a Path Forward

However, the narrative isn’t solely bleak. As global citizens, our choices and voices matter. Supporting ethically sourced products, raising awareness within our communities, or backing organizations fighting against modern slavery can make a tangible difference.

Free the Slaves and other organizations are working tirelessly to combat the issue of modern slavery on multiple fronts. Through its whole-of-society approach, Free the Slaves works with governments to advocate for policy changes and the implementation of robust laws eliminate the conditions that allow slavery to exist and deter and penalize slavery practices. Our efforts also include creating a Forum space for organizations worldwide to collaborate and facilitate knowledge sharing on emerging answers and best practices for ending this injustice. These platforms help pool resources, insights, and experiences, increasing the effectiveness of the fight against modern slavery.

Free the Slaves is also actively engaged in providing training and assistance at the grassroots level, aiding local communities in demanding their human rights, and accessing social support services. This allows them to recognize, resist, and ultimately eradicate slavery in their midst. With operations across the world, Free the Slaves is involved in addressing local issues while maintaining a strategic global perspective. Our approach is evidence-based and focuses on ensuring that survivor experiences inform the strategies employed, making them effective and sensitive to the needs of those most affected.

Research is another crucial area where Free the Slaves contributes to the anti-slavery movement. By conducting research that includes survivor experiences and perspectives, Free the Slaves captures valuable insights that can be used to understand the nuances of modern slavery better and to develop more effective interventions.

Your support of Free the Slaves is a strategic investment toward ending modern slavery. Your support could be in the form of donations, volunteering, or simply spreading awareness about our work. By uniting our efforts and working together, our collective effort and awareness can pave the way for a brighter, more humane future. It’s time to come together to champion the cause of freedom and dignity for all.

Your donation will help us end the conditions that allow modern slavery to exist so that people can experience freedom and safely pursue their dreams.

The extensive reach of modern day slavery may make it seem like an insurmountable problem. But, in the part of the world where slavery is most pervasive, education and empowerment is a real, consistent, and sustainable solution. Let us introduce you to Schools4Freedom.

Schools4Freedom helps entire villages free themselves from slavery by educating and empowering them to break free and stay free. Entire communities come to understand the legal system and how to navigate it. They learn about the life changing government programs they never knew they were entitled to. Equipped with a knowledge of their rights and inherent self-worth, they also learn how to overcome the obstacles that racism, xenophobia, and corruption inevitably bring, and ultimately confront their slave owners and free themselves. Forever.

In three years, 100-200 people in a village come to sustainable freedom; every child is caught up to grade level and has transitioned into the local government school; every child and parent has gained enough confidence to demand equal treatment, even when caste prejudice is rampant; and every person in the village is FREE, knows their rights, and is supporting themselves financially, so they won’t fall prey to the slaveholder again. Schools4Freedom Villages join a federation of freed villages so they can support each other when challenges arise and help others to freedom.

These schools are the catalyst that brings entire villages to sustainable freedom!

Neoslavery: The Perpetuation of Slavery After the American Civil War

INTRODUCTION
After the end of the Second World War, colonial empires broke apart and their former imperial domains asserted themselves as independent nations. However, many of these countries discovered that imperialism had not really ended. Independent nations still found themselves under the control of their former imperial masters. However, the former imperial nations no longer directly controlled these nations politically. Instead the colonizers dominated these new nations economically, culturally, and occasionally militarily. This system is called Neocolonialism and is a powerful force in the world today. Former colonial dominions discovering that they were not truly free from their imperial masters serves as an excellent analogy to a system that this paper terms “Neoslavery.” Just as the Second World War brought an end to the colonial empires of nations such as the United Kingdom and France, so too did the American Civil War bring an end to slavery, at least officially. However, former masters still controlled the men and women that had once been their property. The new Freedmen may not have been called slaves anymore, but they were far from free. In short, though the American Civil War technically brought an end to slavery, Whites kept former slaves in bondage.

By no means is this paper the first piece of writing to suggest that slavery did not actually
end with the American Civil War, nor is this paper the first to use the term neoslavery. Both David Oshinsky and Douglas Blackmon argue that convict leasing, in which the state leased out prisoners to individuals and corporations as a labor force, was a continuation of slavery. Blackmon uses the term neoslavery to describe the convict leasing system. Although Blackmon and others have used the term before, this paper uses the term more broadly to describe Blacks’ experience more generally after the Civil War, but. John Daly’s The Southern Civil War argues that Reconstruction was actually a war, where one of the sides was fighting for a return of the old system, of which slavery was the key component. These authors’ research explores individual aspects of Blacks’ experience following the Civil War in a great deal more depth than this paper will. However, this paper combines elements from these authors’ research in order to paint a broader picture of freedmen’s experience. Even without these authors’ research, primary evidence demonstrates the conditions freedmen faced. Black Codes written into every southern state constitution blatantly took away the rights of former slaves. Violence against freedmen ran rampant as former masters tried to push them back into slavery; Freedmen’s Bureau reports attest to this fact. This paper, then, compares the conditions faced by Blacks under Antebellum slavery to Whites’ legal and
extralegal oppression of Blacks following the American Civil War, attested to in primary
documents and other historians’ research. By making this direct comparison, this paper will
demonstrate that slavery continued after the Civil War in practicality.

In order to make the claim that slavery continued after the conclusion of the American
Civil War, this paper will first demonstrate the conditions that men faced under slavery. Doing so will enable a comparison to the conditions Freedmen faced following the end of the Civil War under neoslavery. For this reason, this paper is divided into two broad sections, each looking at a broad time period. The first section will explore the conditions faced by slaves in the Antebellum (literally, before war) Period. The second section will explore the perpetuation of slavery in the Postbellum (after war) Period. Geographically, the focus is on the southern states. That is not to say that racial oppression did not exist in northern states, but neoslavery as a direct extension of Antebellum slavery was primarily a southern phenomenon. By examining and comparing the conditions Black men and women faced in the South during these two periods, this paper will conclusively prove that slavery continued through legal practices and through violence.

SLAVERY IN THE ANTEBELLUM PERIOD

Slavery was a great evil. As John Boles stated, “Any labor or social system that defined persons as property and deprived them of basic autonomy over their lives was irredeemably evil.” Despite the horrid conditions within slavery, slaves experienced a degree of flexibility within the system, which was often dependent on the slave’s master. For instance, some slaves could supplement their diet with food that they gathered via fishing, hunting, trapping, and so on. It is precisely this relative flexibility that made Neoslavery so bad. In short, conditions during slavery were extremely poor, even with the noted minor flexibility, precisely because masters treated slaves as property as opposed to human beings.

It should be noted that slaveholding was not the norm. Most Whites did not own slaves,
even in the South. Of the Whites who did own slaves, most of them owned only a few. “Slaveholding was concentrated in the hands of a significant minority of the population, and plantation-sized slaveholding was confined to a tiny minority.” Plantations were in the hands of only the extremely wealthy. Plantation owners were the period’s “one percent,” to use modern parlance. Because the rich were able to concentrate slaves in their hands, a discussion of slavery will necessarily focus on these slaves.

Perhaps the most important part of slavery in the Antebellum South was the slaveholding
elite’s denial of the basic humanity of slaves. Slaves were property, and masters treated them as such. Much of the injustice perpetrated against slaves stems from this fact. In court, for instance, trials involving slaves were civil suits. “While white men rarely faced criminal prosecution for striking out at slaves, they quite often found themselves in court for civil suits regarding property damage to the slave of another.” If a White man injured someone’s slave, he would face trial not on the grounds of harming another human being, but rather for damaging property. The solution to many of these trials was that one party would have to pay the other. For instance, in Natchez, Mississippi, there was the 1856 case Andrew Brown v. Samuel Cox. Samuel Cox had shot Andrew Brown’s slave, Jake. Andrew Brown wanted money for damages.

The jurors … could have found that Cox was justified in shooting Jake [a slave], simply
out of the belief that a runaway slave is inherently threatening. Yet the jury found for
Brown and awarded high damages, the full fifteen-hundred-dollar price asked for Jake. …
It seems likely that the jury found for Brown in part because he was prominent and popular
in Natchez whereas Cox was unknown, rather than because of any community standard
against killing slaves.

In the aforementioned trial, the court only required Cox to pay Brown for damaging his property, even though Cox had killed a man. As noted in Gross, further evidence demonstrating slaves’ status as property is the use of slaves as a form of credit. “Slaves were the cornerstone of the Southern credit economy.” Gross goes on to point out that “because slaves were easily convertible into cash, they were ‘especially desirable for collateralizing debt arrangements.’” Slaves were worth quite a bit of money, and so, of course, Whites used them for credit and debt related transactions. Moreover, owners would often lend out slaves to other individuals or even “corporate entities, especially towns and cities” for temporary use. If one party breached the terms of the contract, the other would likely sue. “In some similar cases, owners sued hirers for mistreating a slave. More often, these cases resembled warranty suits in that hirers sued owners when the leased slave turned out to be ‘unsound,’ died, or ran away.” Essentially, if the slave’s owner felt his property had been damaged, he would sue. If the person leasing the slave felt that
he had been leased defective property, he would sue. Of course, slaves themselves were denied access to the courtroom. “The most silent participants in circuit court trials were the subjects of the disputes: the slaves themselves.” This makes sense; if two people were to get into a dispute about a chair, they would not seek the chair’s testimony on the subject. The systematic denial of slaves’ humanity within the court system is a powerful reminder of the insidious nature of slavery. Slaves were not people, and were, therefore, not liable to be treated humanely.

Few slaves could share their experience without Whites filtering their stories. One notable
exception is Frederick Douglass. Douglass grew up a slave before escaping to the North, and so his experiences provide an excellent window into the conditions many slaves faced. Douglass wrote of Colonel Lloyd’s plantation in Maryland, where he lived for many years, that

Public opinion was, indeed, a measurable constraint upon the cruelty and barbarity of
masters, overseers, and slave-drivers, whenever and wherever it could reach them; but there were certain secluded and out of the way places, even in the State of Maryland, fifty years ago, seldom visited by a single ray of healthy public sentiment, where slavery, wrapt in its own congenial darkness, could and did develop all of its malign and shocking
characteristics, where it could be indecent without shame, cruel without shuddering, and
murderous without apprehension or fear of exposure, or punishment.

During the Antebellum Period, most members of White society believed that slavery in Maryland was not as bad as it was elsewhere due to the tempering influence of the nearby Free States. Douglass acknowledges this belief, and even holds that it may be true where such tempering influences can be felt. However, he points out that on isolated plantations, such as the one on which he lived, slavery is just as brutal as it is elsewhere. Douglass shares many examples of masters’ and overseers’ cruelty and inhumane treatment of slaves. For instance, a slave came to their master complaining that her overseer was mistreating her. Rather than reprimanding the offending overseer, the master instead reprimanded the slave girl and ordered her to return to the cruel overseer. “Thus the poor girl was compelled to return without redress, and perhaps to receive an additional flogging for daring to appeal to authority higher than that of the overseer.” Another incident that Douglass describes revolves around a young woman named Esther, a slave on the same plantation as Douglass. Another slave, Ned Roberts, was courting her. Douglass points out that while some slave holders would have been pleased with the match, their master, Captain
Anthony, was not. He forbade the two from continuing to meet, but they disobeyed.16 Captain Anthony, of course, was not tolerant of this disobedience.

I was … awakened by the heart-rending shrieks and piteous cries of poor Esther. …
Esther’s wrists were firmly tied, and the twisted rope was fastened to a strong iron staple
in a heavy wooden beam above, near the fire-place. Here she stood on a bench, her arms
tightly drawn above her head. Her back and shoulders were perfectly bare. Behind her
stood old master, with cowhide in hand, pursuing his barbarous work …. He was cruelly
deliberate, and protracted the torture as one who delighted with the agony of his victim.
Again and again he drew the hateful scourge through his hand, adjusting it with a view of
dealing the most pain-giving blow his strength and skill could inflict.

Such deliberate torture clearly demonstrates the inhumane conditions that slaves regularly faced. One final example from Douglass’s book is the murder of a slave by the name of Bill Denby. Whilst the overseer was flogging him, Denby broke away and dove into the nearby creek. Understandably, Denby refused to emerge even when the overseer ordered him to.
“Whereupon, for this refusal, Gore [the overseer] shot him dead!” Both Captain Anthony, their direct master, and Colonel Lloyd, who owned the plantation, redressed Gore for killing Denby. However, Gore merely explained “that Denby had become unmanageable; that he set a dangerous example to the other slaves, and that unless some such prompt measure was resorted to there would be an end to all rule and order on the plantation.” Anthony and Lloyd found Gore’s explanation satisfactory, and he returned to his job without repercussion.

Douglass mentions other occasions on which Whites killed slaves without consequence.
“One of the commonest sayings to which my ears became accustomed, was that it was ‘worth but half a cent to kill a nigger, and half a cent to bury one.’” This seems to conflict with the cost at which slaves were purchased (“‘Prime male field hands’ in the New Orleans market sold for about $700 in 1846; their price had more than doubled by 1860 to upwards of $1,700.”). But in a way, Douglass was nonetheless right. He points out that according to the law and public opinion, Whites were almost always justified in killing a slave. The expense of a slave was not about the slave’s life, but rather his labor. If the master, overseer, or another White deemed the slave to be unruly or dangerous and killed him, then said White was considered justified in his actions, and could often get off with little to no legal action, especially if the murdering party owned the slave. The blatant disregard for slaves’ lives demonstrates, once again, the belief held by many Whites, that
slaves were not human, or were less than fully human. It is for this reason that slaves were so harshly redressed for “misbehaving.”

There were many punishments that slaves could face for displeasing their masters
dependent on the severity of their transgression. At the harsh end of the spectrum was whipping, which looms large in the modern world as a symbol of slavery. For those who lived as slaves, whipping, whether it occurred frequently or not, remained a powerful reminder of who had authority. As John Boles stated, “The frequency of punishments like whipping has been hotly contested by historians, and the variables involved from planter to planter make any kind of numerical analysis futile. … But in the minds of everyone involved, White and Black, the lash stood as an ever-present reminder of where authority lay.” Regardless of how often whipping actually occurred, it always remained a possibility. The threat of violent redress was there, which was itself a very effective tool for maintaining the status quo, regardless of how frequently masters and overseers actually whipped slaves. Thus, slave parents taught their children from a young age “to fear the lash and taught them behavior that would avoid it, and the visible scars on many Black backs bore silent testimony to the pervasive reality of force.” The threat of whipping was
so present in the minds of slaves that they would ensure that even their small children knew about it. As shown above, whipping was an ever-present part of Frederick Douglass’s life, which backs up Boles’s assertion that regardless of frequency, whipping was a significant part of slavery. It is difficult to imagine the fear that slaves must have felt, unless one can visualize what a harsh whipping looked like.

This photograph provides a moving image of what whipping could do to a person, and thus is one of the most infamous photographs concerning slavery. According to the original caption, the whipping was particularly harsh and left this man in bed, unable to work, for two months. As a result, the master fired the overseer who was responsible. However, one should note two things. The first is that the master likely did not punish the overseer because he felt the slave man had been treated unfairly, but rather he was likely angry at having lost the man’s work for such an extended period. Second, even though this whipping represents the more extreme end of the punishment spectrum, it is still an important indicator of Whites’ attitudes towards slaves. Put simply, if someone were to perpetrate such an act against someone the law considered a man, his punishment would have been worse. As it stood, since masters and the law regarded slaves as property and as inferior persons, the offending overseer’s punishment was losing his job.

It is important note that the slaves had agency, which they used to improve their conditions
and treatment.

Mules inexplicably let out of the barn lot, tools left in the rain, cotton plants accidentally plowed under, chores that required double the normal time to complete for mysterious reasons, sickness that struck down a large portion of the field hands – maladies too vague to doctor but too “real” to ignore – such were the weapons “defenseless” slaves could bring
to bear against rigid taskmasters.

Masters’ mistreatment of slaves could lead to a variety of responses that would cut production of the plantation. Therefore, if masters wanted their plantation to be efficient, they had to assure a certain quality of living. “In clothing as in food, and, indeed, in their whole culture, slaves never simply accepted what the White man gave or left them ….” Despite other people owning them, despite the conditions that they faced, slaves exercised a degree of control over their lives. Perhaps one of the most important examples of slaves’ agency had to do with food, “Food was if anything even more basic to the slaves’ well-being than clothing and shelter, and the quality and quantity of food available varied at least as widely.” While slave-owners did provide enough food for slaves to maintain sufficient health, variety was lacking, and this is where slaves’ agency comes into play. Many slaves maintained their own gardens, and sometimes masters would buy some of the slaves’ produce. If slaves produced a surplus in their individual gardens, many of them would take their goods into town in order to sell them and earn some money.31 Furthermore, “it was not uncommon for slaves to own pigs, cows, even horses, wagons, boats, and household utensils beyond those provided by the master.” Slaves could accumulate some wealth for themselves (though obviously not much). Beyond their own small gardens, some slaves could even hunt, fish, and trap “and the result of these activities added nutritional value and much-wanted variety to their meals.” By exercising their agency, slaves improved the food that masters allotted to them, and masters allowed it, either explicitly or implicitly. In this way, at least, slaves were more than just property. Property cannot, through its own work, improve its lot. People can. That slaves could
exercise a degree of their own agency proves false the notion that they were somehow less than human and merely the property of their masters.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that Whites bought and sold slaves; they did not receive the
freedoms associated with being a fully recognized person.

The critical question about slavery is the absence of freedom, not the presence of relative
physical comforts. No recitation of survival rates, daily caloric intake, and quality and
quantity of living space can negate the psychological effect of bondage. The possibility of
being whipped or being separated forever from a loved one and the reality of having little
control over most aspects of one’s life must have been ever-present burdens oppressing
most slaves.

Throughout the Antebellum Period, masters denied slaves the basic freedoms associated with being a full person. Yet even within the bounds of a system which defined them as property, slaves were able to exercise agency in order to improve their condition. Despite the horrible conditions that slaves faced, they survived, and as traditional histories would have it, achieved their freedom following the end of the Civil War. Neoslavery, however, paints a different picture.

NEOSLAVERY IN THE POSTBELLUM PERIOD

Following the end of the American Civil War, slaves were suddenly free. White former
slaveholders obviously did not welcome this change. William DeRosset, of North Carolina,
“remained willing to sacrifice his right arm if it would help to ensure the ultimate triumph of the Lost Cause.” The “Lost Cause” was slavery, or, more specifically, southern states’ attempt to establish independence in order to safeguard slavery. Whites resorted to several methods to maintain a social hierarchy that ultimately resembled slavery so much, that slavery never truly ended. Several states enacted legal structures or “Black Codes” that severely curtailed the freedom of the Freedmen. Perhaps worst among the Black Codes were provisions that created the convict leasing system, in which the state sold “criminals” (whose only real crime was their skin color) out to corporations and individuals as a work force. Violence, of course, pervaded the entire system, but even outside of the aforementioned legal systems, Whites committed organized acts of violence against former slaves. The ultimate result of these actions was the practical continuation of slavery.

Despite the Union forcing southern states to officially acknowledge the end of slavery as a
prerequisite for reentry into the country, southern states quickly enacted a series of laws designed to perpetuate the “Peculiar Institution” in all but name. These so-called Black Codes were similar across the region, and all had the same effect: the legal continuation of slavery. Black Codes even thrust those Blacks who had already been free before the Civil War into neoslavery due to what historians call the “one drop” rule. “Negroes and their issue, even where one ancestor in each succeeding generation to the fourth inclusive is White, shall be deemed persons of color.” All Blacks, whether recently freed slaves, or men and women who had been free for years, were now subject to the same set of laws that systematically deprived them of their freedoms. The Black Codes took more than just their abstract rights, too. “No freedman, free negro or mulatto … shall keep or carry fire-arms of any kind, or any ammunition, dirk or bowie knife….” If free Blacks possessed these items or any other pieces of property that the state felt was inappropriate for them to own, they would face legal charges. For all intents and purposes, Black Codes denied African
Americans the right to private property. And this denial did not just extend to weapons. “No
freedman, free negro or mulatto … can rent or lease any lands or tenements except in
incorporated cities or towns, in which places the corporate authorities shall control the same….” For many Americans in the nineteenth century, the idea of freedom and the idea of owning land were closely tied. Thus, Whites took this possibility away from neoslaves, “except in incorporated cities or towns, in which places the corporate authorities shall control the same….” Which means that even in towns and cities, where the law technically allowed neoslaves to own land, the town’s authorities ultimately had control over the neoslaves’ property.

Furthermore, Black Codes curtailed neoslaves’ right to become skilled laborers. No person of color shall pursue or practice the art, trade or business of an artisan, mechanic or shop-keeper, or any other trade, employment or business (besides that of husbandry, or that of a servant under a contract for service or labor,) on his own account and for his own benefit, or in partnership with a white person, or as agent or servant of any persons, until he shall have obtained a license therefore from the Judge of the District Court; which license shall be good for one year only.

Once again, this dramatically changed the condition of Blacks who had been free for a long time. Beforehand, the law entitled them to any work they chose. After state legislatures wrote the Black Codes into law, the only job a long freed Black person could legally do was work for a White person (unless of course a judge decided to grant them a license, and even then the license was for one year only). However, more recently freed slaves also felt the effect of such stipulations. During slavery, there had been skilled slave workers on plantations. For instance, Frederick Douglass wrote that “‘Uncle’ Toney was the Blacksmith, ‘Uncle’ Harry the cartwright, and ‘Uncle’ Abel was the shoemaker, and these had assistants in their several departments.” These men were skilled workers, and these men were slaves. Clearly, then, the aforementioned clause affected more than just long-free Blacks.

And then there were the vagrancy laws. Here are just two examples. Version 1, from Mississippi:

…That all rogues and vagabonds, idle and dissipated persons, beggars, jugglers, or persons practicing unlawful games or plays, runaways, common drunkards, common nightwalkers, pilferers, lewd, wanton, or lascivious persons, in speech or behavior, common railers and brawlers, persons who neglect their calling or employment, misspend what they earn, or do not provide for the support of themselves or their families, or dependents, and all other idle and disorderly persons, including all who neglect all lawful business, habitually misspend their time by frequenting houses of ill-fame, gaming-houses, or tippling shops, shall be deemed and considered vagrants….

Version 2, from South Carolina:

All persons who have not some fixed and known place of abode, and some lawful and respectable employment; … those who are found wandering from place to place, vending, bartering or peddling any articles or commodities, without a license from the District Judge…; all common gamblers; persons who lead idle or disorderly lives …; those who … are able to work and do not work; those who … do not provide a reasonable and proper maintenance for themselves and families; those who are engaged in representing publicly or privately … without license, any … entertainment …; … those who hunt game of any description or fish on the land of others … shall be deemed vagrants, and be liable to the punishment hereinafter prescribed.

These two examples are almost identical; while the exact wording between the two versions may vary, both make almost all of the same things illegal. Under vagrancy laws, the police could arrest Blacks for a wide variety of crimes, but the basic effect was to make it illegal for former slaves to do much besides work. Vagrancy laws created the legal grounds for neoslavery more than any other Black Code. Not only did the laws force neoslaves to constantly prove suitable employment, but they also provided the convicts for the convict leasing system.

If any freedman, free negro, or mulatto, convicted of any of the misdemeanors provided
against in this act, shall fail or refuse for the space of five days, after conviction, to pay the
fine and costs imposed, such person shall be hired out by the sheriff or other officer, at
public outcry, to any white person who will pay said fine and all costs, and take said convict
for the shortest time.

Men convicted of nothing more than being unable to provide proof of suitable employment could be sold back into slavery. Officially, Black Codes and their associated laws ended under Congressional Reconstruction, but they would return as Jim Crow laws only a decade later.

A discussion of convict leasing will necessarily focus on Mississippi. The aforementioned
Black Code introducing the earliest version of convict leasing laws originally hails from
Mississippi. Furthermore, convict leasing first took off in Mississippi, thanks to a man named
Edmund Richardson. Post-emancipation, White southerners’ greatest fears had been realized –Black men were now free, and Whites believed that Black men were naturally criminals. “Southern whites had long viewed criminal behavior as natural to the Negro. They took his stealing for granted, as a biological flaw. An ‘honest darkey,’ most believed, was as rare as a Negro virgin of fifteen.” As a result, former slaves were arrested in droves “for acts that in the past had been dealt with by the master alone.” The policing of ex-slaves’ behavior became the principal job of law enforcement. Southern prisons filled with Black prisoners. During the Antebellum and war years, prisons were for Whites. In the early years of the Postbellum Period, the reverse became true. “By 1866, the Natchez city jail held sixty-seven Black prisoners and just eleven whites. In Grenada … there were seventeen Blacks and one white. In Columbus … there were fifty-three Blacks and no whites. Almost overnight, the jailhouse had become a ‘negro preserve.’”

The problem faced by southern states was that their prison systems were inadequate for
such a sharp increase in prison populations, especially considering the Civil War had destroyed many of their prisons. It is here that the aforementioned Edmund Richardson comes into play. Richardson needed labor, and the state needed a place to send ex-slaves. “The result was a contract that allowed Richardson to work these felons outside the prison walls.” Richardson took the exslave convicts off of the state’s hands, and the state paid Richardson $18,000 a year. Convict leasing had officially begun in Mississippi. In the mid-1870s, convict leasing took off. The state legislature passed new laws, the sentences for minor crimes increased, and local courts began to destroy what protection neoslaves did have. From 1874 to 1877 the number of convicts quadrupled. The state coupled these actions with an official leasing act, “All prisoners, it declared, may ‘work outside the penitentiary in building railroads, levees or in any private labor or employment.’ With the gates now officially open, Mississippi leased more than a thousand of its convicts in one fell swoop.” And of course, the law makers cleverly wrote the law so as to virtually exclude Whites from the leasing system. The convict leasing system kept growing, and
became exceptionally lucrative for rich Whites. “The exclusive right to lease state convicts quickly became Mississippi’s most prized political contract, coveted by planters, businessmen, and speculators across the board.” Convict leasing had become a profitable enterprise, and everyone wanted the enormous wealth that they could gain from it.

In 1876, a man by the name of Jones Hamilton made a deal with the Mississippi state
government, obtained the rights to all leased convicts, and began subleasing those convicts to others. He acted as something of a middle man between the state and the subleasers, making him rich in the process. Though the state paid Hamilton no money, he derived enormous profits through subleasing convicts out at nine dollars a month. “From a business standpoint, the subleasing was ideal. It plugged the major weakness of the old system [slavery]: the high fixed cost of labor.”

In terms of human misery, however, this system could hardly have been worse. The convict
now found himself laboring for the profits of three separate parties: the sublessee, the
lessee, and the state. There was no one to protect him from savage beatings, endless
workdays, and murderous neglect. ‘It is to be supposed that sub-lessees [take] convicts for
the purpose of making money out of them,’ wrote a prison doctor, ‘so naturally, the less
food and clothing used and the more labor derived from their bodies, the more money in
the pockets of the sub-lessee.’ If a convict died or escaped, his employer lost nothing.
Colonel Hamilton would profitably supply a replacement – at nine dollars per month.

Here lay the major difference between convict leasing and slavery. Because slaves were expensive, and because the masters needed their labor, it made sense to make sure that the slaves were reasonably well-cared-for, even allowed a certain degree of freedom, as borne out in Black Southerners. Convicts, however, were cheap and by no means was leasing one a permanent agreement. Therefore, convicts became expendable commodities, and were treated as such. Their places of employment became veritable death camps, with the annual mortality rate reaching a staggering sixteen percent at points during the 1880s. “In 1882 … 126 of 735 Black state convicts
perished, as opposed to 2 of 83 whites.”

Black men were not the only ones leased out under this system. Although Black women
made up a relatively small portion of Mississippi’s convict population, they, too, were leased out. Often times they worked “as domestics and prostitutes for those in charge.” Perhaps worse still, children were being leased out. “…[The Mississippi] penal code did not distinguish between adult and juvenile offenders.” Therefore, courts tried and punished Black children just as adults – and just as unfairly. Children convicts became a huge part of the convict leasing system. “By 1880, at least one convict in four was an adolescent or a child – a percentage that did not diminish with time.” Courts convicted children as young as six for minor crimes and threw them into this heinous system.

Although the conditions faced by Black convicts in Mississippi were extreme, “Mississippi
was hardly alone.” In Alabama, for instance, police arrested a Black man by the name of Green Cottenham for vagrancy and the prisons leased him out to a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. He was put to work in a mine called “Slope No. 12.” Within a single year, sixty men at Slope 12 had died either of the physical torture inflicted upon them by their White taskmasters or to the disease that ran rampant through the mine’s population. Furthermore, it was not only large corporations that were guilty of renting convicts. “The judges and sheriffs who sold convicts to giant corporate prison mines also leased even larger numbers of African Americans to local farmers, and allowed their neighbors and political supporters to acquire still more Black laborers directly from their courtrooms.” Convict leasing had become such an important part of Southern life that the state government was using the system to garner political favors from rich Whites and wealthy corporations. Blackmon goes on to say that “by 1900, the South’s judicial system had been wholly reconfigured to make one of its primary purposes the coercion of African Americans to comply with the social customs and labor demands of Whites.” Furthermore, “revenues from the neo-slavery poured the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars into the treasuries of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and South Carolina – where more
than 75 percent of the Black population in the United States then lived.”

Simply taking convict leasing into account is enough to prove that slavery continued beyond the end of the Civil War. Southern courts and penitentiaries systematically convicted and leased out African Americans to the benefit of rich Whites. And while it is true that the legal abolition of slavery served to protect many men and women from being bought and sold, convict leasing provided wealthy Whites an excellent way to work around the legal abolition of slavery. Once again, Whites were buying and selling Black men and women as commodities, just as they had under slavery. In fact, in many ways, David Oshinsky’s title was right. Convict leasing was worse than slavery. At least conditions under slavery were livable. They were not so under convict leasing. Unfortunately, Whites’ violence against Blacks was not confined to convict leasing.

Convict leasing represented the perfect combination of violence and law. However,
violence against Blacks was much more widespread than the confines of the convict leasing system. Freedman’s Bureau reports are rife with reports of violence committed by Whites against the former slaves, which, more often than not, remained unpunished. For instance, one agent reported the case of Floyd Adams vs. Madison Doom, in which Doom, a White man, assaulted Adams. The court ruled in favor of Doom, allowing his actions to go unpunished. As the agent put it, “In my opinion the action of the Grand Jury in discharging Madison Dooms from accountability was an act of gross injustice and … the jury had literally given the White man permission to knock the negro down without fear of molestation.” Despite gaining legal access to the courts, Blacks still found that Frederick Douglass’s assertion that “it was ‘worth but half a cent to kill a nigger,’” held true. And of course, this was not an isolated incident. Crimes against Blacks were common, but courts almost never convicted Whites. In part, this was due to the difficulty of getting a case to trial.

Generally, the air is full of outrages on the Freedmen by the Whites … but I understand
you to mean violence, personal assaults, cruelty, of which very few cases have come to my
knowledge, and then the facts were not clearly established, because the freedmen dare not
testify through fear of yet greater violence.

In many instances, Whites prevented Blacks from testifying against them by threatening violence. Even those cases that ended up in the courtroom rarely resulted in the authorities punishing the White party. “The trials have … almost without exception where White persons have been parties the decisions have been in their favor – there have been several cases of assaults upon freedmen – in not one instance has any satisfaction been given the freedmen.” Despite Blacks’ attempts to receive justice, Whites consistently avoided punishment for violence against freedmen. Violence went beyond merely beating or assaulting freedmen. Whites often killed freedmen, one of the most popular methods for doing so was lynching, as depicted below.

“Thomas Shipp Abram Smith Lynching,” Lawrence Henry Beitler, photographer (August 7,
1930).

The key feature is that it was a public event. People came out to watch these extralegal hangings, and the authorities sanctioned the activity. In order for an event to be public, it must be common knowledge. The fact is that the police did nothing to stop such brutal acts of violence, at least by the time that Lawrence Beitler took this photograph. Throughout the Postbellum Period and a large part of the twentieth century, lynching loomed as a threat to the lives of Black men, women, and children. While an initial reading might suggest that the aforementioned violence was random and disorganized – and perhaps some of it was – it was part of a broader effort to force former slaves back into slavery in a war that has mistakenly been called Reconstruction.

The name historians have given to the first part of the Postbellum Period, Reconstruction,
is a misnomer that represents an attempt to deny the extreme violence that permeated the period. Reconstruction was a time period that began immediately following the end of the Civil War and ended in 1877. Ostensibly, Reconstruction reunited the country and rebuilt the South. However, several historians have recently asserted that Reconstruction was actually a war, among them John Daly. Daly calls the period “the Southern Civil War.” He asserts that it was fought between ExConfederate Extremists on one side and a Biracial Coalition on the other. The former fought to destroy “the two local symbols of northern victory: the White unionist political organizations and the attempts by Blacks to live free.” In short, they were fighting to preserve slavery. The extreme violence throughout the period was in no way random or disorganized, either. There were “dozens of battles and thousands of violent incidents in the South between 1865 and 1877.” There was
even a full scale pitched battle fought in the streets of New Orleans.

In a deliberate attack, as many as eight thousand White Leaguers, protesting the biracial
government of Republican Governor Kellog and intimidating voters in the upcoming
election, devised barricades along Poydras Street and armed behind them. Ex-Confederate
Extremists faced an Ex-Confederate Republican opponent, James Longstreet, Robert E.
Lee’s second in command during the American Civil War. Longstreet, led the combined
forces of state government–the biracial militia of New Orleans and the biracial
Metropolitan Police–against his former Confederate compatriots. The Biracial Coalition
army, fighting for fair elections and civil rights and led by one of the most famous
Confederate heroes, numbered perhaps two thousand and were well-equipped                   with Gatling guns and artillery pieces….

The Ex-Confederates sought to destroy whatever freedoms that African Americans had obtained up to that point. They sought to restore slavery and reestablish themselves as the masters over the neoslaves. The violence was well-organized and coordinated. Reconstruction had all the trappings of a war, and the forces who aimed to reinstate slavery ultimately won. However, though they lost, it is important to note, once again, that African Americans exercised their own agency. They fought alongside pro-freedom Whites to protect themselves. Just as in slavery, when slaves utilized what little agency they had to improve their conditions, so too did neoslaves utilize their greater agency to protect their freedom and their lives. Ultimately, this is perhaps why racist responses were so virulent; because slaves were free, they were a threat.

Both legally and violently, with convict leasing at the convergence of the two, Whites
forced ex-slaves back into bondage. Thus, slavery was perpetuated, and even worsened in many practical ways. By no means do these represent the extent of the ways in which former masters sought to perpetuate slavery. One such example is sharecropping – a practice in which White plantation owners leased parcels of land and basic farming supplies to their former slaves in exchange for the neoslaves’ profits – but sharecropping and other forms of economic oppression lie outside the scope of this paper. Despite Whites’ attempts to curtail Blacks’ freedom, former slaves remained determined to assert it. “No matter how each ex-slave chose to express his or her freedom, many of them insisted that it be understood and acknowledged….” However, former masters were ultimately successful and effectively established neoslavery.

CONCLUSION

Frederick Douglass once wrote that “under the whole heavens there could be no relation more unfavorable to the development of honorable character than that sustained by the slaveholder to the slave.” Even people who, in the absence of slavery, would have been decent individuals were made indecent by the “Peculiar Institution.” Douglass’ assertion holds just as true to those who perpetuated slavery following the end of the American Civil War. The men who perpetuated slavery following the American Civil War were not decent or honorable. Slavery did not truly end in the United States until much later. Throughout the Postbellum Period and beyond, Whites forced former slaves and their families back into bondage. Legally, Blacks were deprived of their rights, and Whites violently rebuked or courts threw them into the appalling convict lease system when they attempted to assert a modicum of the rights they felt they were due as free people. Precisely for this reason, they were not free people. Slavery had ended only in name.

Most people think that slavery and its incarnations are a relic of human history. While much of our pre-modern world was built on the backs of slaves, we are inclined to believe that the progress of modernity was due to systems of free labor. While it’s true that slavery has been legally abolished in many countries, insidious systems of slavery still persist throughout the world. In fact, modern slavery exists in both the developed and developing world in various forms. In the United States, modern slavery is most associated with human trafficking, and the cruel underground economy that it operates within. However, in other parts of the world, modern slavery happens at the surface and goes completely unpunished.

An example of this in the developing world is in the brickyards of Pakistan. Here, modern slavery traps generations of workers into inescapable debt, preventing them from achieving any social, legal, or economic means of escaping their condition. Thankfully, there are people and organizations trying to eliminate this practice, and they need your help. All People Free is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the elimination of modern slavery in Pakistan. All People Free provides debt relief, education, and investment in these workers, freeing them and their families from these inhumane conditions. If you’re passionate about ending modern slavery, partnering with All People Free is a great place to start. 

Resources

freetheslaves.com, “Modern Slavery: A Comprehensive Exploration.”; voices4freedom.org, “Forms of Modern Day Slavery: Forced Labor and Child Slavery.“; soar.suny.edu, “Neoslavery: The Perpetuation of Slavery After the American Civil War.” By Benjamin Falter; allpeoplefree.com, “WHAT IS MODERN SLAVERY?“;reddit.com, “My critiques of the “Neo-Slavery” Thesis.” r/KnowingBetter;

Appendix

My critiques of the “Neo-Slavery” Thesis

Let me say up front that I’ve been watching Knowing Better for years now, and I’ve agreed with about 75% of the views he has espoused. His videos on the Lost Cause, Imperial Japan, Police Militarization, and Cherry-Picking History were all brilliant. His recent video on Neo-Slavery is, by contrast, the rare example where I find myself pushing back.

I work in history, so it’s all the more important to me to get the record set straight. I have a degree in history, but that doesn’t mean I know everything there is, so any good-faith replies are welcomed.

1. Suggesting Jefferson was pro-slavery. This point is minor since it doesn’t effect the majority of his argument, but it’s still an erroneous framing. Of the major founders (Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Franklin, Madison) each was largely anti slavery. Washington said privately he wished to see an end to slavery and his wife freed their slaves on their deaths. Franklin signed a petition calling for the abolition of slavery towards the end of his life. Hamilton joined the New York Manumission society. Adams never personally owned a slave. But of them all, no founder did more to legislatively restrict slavery than Jefferson. Jefferson was involved in legalizing manumission in Virginia. He tried to include a passage condemning the slave trade in the Declaration of Independence. He tried to ban slavery in the western territories and was involved in its ban in the Northwest Ordinance. And then, as President, he spearheaded and signed the law banning the trans-atlantic slave trade. Yes, his personal conduct with slavery can be criticized, perhaps fairly. But portraying him as “pro-slavery” is quite disengounous, especially when framing John Adams – who, to my knowledge, never lifted a finger on the issue – as an abolitionist. It’s also sort of a moot point considering neither was even directly involved in the constitution, as KB himself admitted.
2. Lincoln’s Response to Greely Letters. This one is also minor since KB tries to clarify, but as pointed out (ironically, given his voiceover support) by Atun-Shei in Checkmate Lincolnites, this quote is taken out of context. “If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” This quote is often used to frame Lincoln as being ambivalent to slavery – despite his actions, party affiliation, and quotes like “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this country cannot continue permanently half slave and half free.” When the quote given by Lincoln was stated, he was attempting to quell criticism on both sides and keep together a fragile coalition of ardent abolitionists, working-class whites, and copperheads. Again, KB does point out that Lincoln was against slavery, but this framing perpetuates the misinterpretation that Lincoln didn’t care about ending slavery.
3. Portraying Britain as being somehow more progressive on slavery than the United States. Despite the lovely words of that one judge KB quoted, this ruling effected next to no slaves. The overwhelming majority of slaves in the British Empire were in their colonies, which were allowed to remain in place until 1833. This framing also ignores that Britain, Spain, Portugal, and France were the nations responsible for introducing slavery to the so-called New World in the first place.
4. The idea that nobody expected slavery to be phased out. This one is really odd. Slavery was becoming increasingly unprofitable until the invention of the Cotton Gin. Northern states were outlawing slavery, the transatlantic slave trade was ending, and all that apparent progress was undone. If there’s some hole in this logic, ok, but KB doesn’t even bring it up.
5. Framing the loophole in the 13th Amendment as a legitimate one. This one really confuses me. If slavery is illegal, it’s illegal. Maybe it’s not illegal to own slaves specifically, but if slavery is illegal, then you can’t legally own slaves. I don’t know why KB acts like this logic makes any sort of sense. It seems to suggest the 13th Amendment didn’t “really” make slavery illegal, when it absolutely did.
6. FDR only ended this neo-slavery because he didn’t want to look like a hypocrite. This one is just really odd. Japan was rounding up Chinese citizens and killing them in the thousands, as was Germany. The Axis would have had no leg to stand on criticizing this. I could believe FDR wanted to end this system anyway and was just looking for an excuse, I don’t buy that it was done solely to protect against hypocrisy burns.
7. This one is the biggest issue, in my opinion. This neo-slavery was NOT chattel slavery. One of the biggest differences between chattel slavery and other sorts, like indentured or penal, is that chattel slaves are BORN slaves. This system that KB describes is not inherited, ergo it isn’t the same as chattel slavery.
8. And now there’s the key problem with KB’s pro repirations arguments. Blacks are not the only groups that have suffered injustice in recent history. Nor is it just “minorities”. Irish, Italians, and Poles were heavily discriminated against until the 60’s or so, including being the target of the 1920’s KKK. But beyond that, if you honestly support repirations, you are suggesting that tax money should go to wealthy blacks. If on the other hand you only think it should go to poor people, then why should it matter why the person is poor? If you’re poor because you’re black or you’re poor because your family business went bust in 2008, how does it matter? If you’re poor, you should receive support, and if you’re not, you shouldn’t. Seems simple.

What Is Wrong With Our Country?
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/05/03/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-lawyers/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/06/10/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-special-interest-groups-and-lobbyists/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/06/14/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-double-standards/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/07/01/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-our-woke-military/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/07/19/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-the-irs-and-our-tax-system/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/07/22/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-our-welfare-system/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/07/26/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-the-poor/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/08/02/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-the-rich/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/08/26/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-our-police-forces/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/08/30/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-our-legal-and-judicial-system/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/09/02/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-our-federal-government/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/09/06/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-our-alphabet-soup-of-agencies/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/10/04/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-sarbanes-oxley-corporate-governance-law-2002/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/10/07/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-civil-rights-attorneys-fees-award-act-of-1976/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/10/21/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-snake-river-massacre-hells-canyon-massacre-of-1887/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/11/29/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-pain-management-doctors/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2023/01/13/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-wounded-knee/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2023/02/03/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-the-pentagon-papers/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2023/02/07/how-we-sold-our-soul-the-paris-peace-accords-of-1973/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2023/02/10/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-exposing-the-greenbrier-bunker/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2023/02/14/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-how-congress-sold-south-vietnam-out-and-the-repercussions-that-followed/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2023/02/28/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-polyyfluoralkyl-substances-pfas-and-endocrine-disrupting-chemicals-edc/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2023/03/24/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-our-advanced-education-system-is-sick-how-can-we-save-it/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2023/04/21/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-internment-camps/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2024/02/27/lebensborn/
Miscellaneous(Military, Voting, Economy , Religion and etc) Postings
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/11/27/dominion-voting-system-exposed/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/11/24/why-doc-holiday-epitomizes-americas-indomitable-spirit/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/11/13/voter-fraud-in-2020-how-will-effect-future-elections/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/11/11/veteran-suicides-where-we-failed/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/10/21/what-happened-to-seal-team-six/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/12/04/what-will-become-of-our-capitalistic-society/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/06/voting-in-america-in-the-era-of-the-pandemic/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/10/22/campaign-funding-disparity-between-democrats-and-republicans/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/09/why-the-left-socialist-and-communist-hate-religion/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/13/campaigning-for-public-office-in-the-age-of-the-coronavirus/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/23/restaurants-and-buffets-in-the-age-of-covid/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/10/02/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-jehovah-witness/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/05/are-we-a-nation-of-wimps-why-all-the-counseling/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/11/are-their-inequalities-in-salaries-for-movie-stars-based-on-sex/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/11/is-the-disparity-in-salaries-based-on-sex-a-thing-of-the-past/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/15/has-our-re-opening-been-intentionally-sabotaged/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/08/01/zombie-apocalypse-our-future/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/10/07/president-trump-is-being-accused-of-not-accepting-a-loss-in-the-2020-election/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/27/who-controls-the-voting-process/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/27/voter-fraud-with-mail-in-ballots-fact-or-fiction/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/26/polls-how-accurate-are-they/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/09/voting-along-party-lines-is-old-school/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/08/23/what-happens-to-president-trump-if-he-wins-the-election-but-he-loses-the-senate/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/08/06/voting-in-november/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/18/can-president-trump-win-again-in-2020/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/10/if-you-are-voting-for-biden-consider-psychiatric-help/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/08/05/can-american-win-the-war-for-the-world-market/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/08/13/why-are-an-ever-increasing-number-of-american-citizens-relinquishing-their-citizenship/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/09/voting-along-party-lines-is-old-school/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/15/ufos-what-is-our-government-not-telling-us/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/21/end-of-days/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/22/do-we-need-military-bases-in-every-country/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/12/25/navarro-2020-election-report-examined/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/01/01/did-brad-parscale-almost-bankrupt-the-trump-2020-election/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/02/02/what-gives-people-the-right/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/02/04/the-origins-of-the-term-gaslighting/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/03/16/election-reform/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/03/16/voter-fraud-in-2020-revisited/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/03/19/is-the-stock-market-only-for-the-big-boys/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/03/23/the-history-of-unions-in-america/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/03/30/the-chinese-and-mexican-drug-war-with-america/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/04/23/are-reverse-mortgages-legit/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/04/27/does-tiger-woods-have-a-self-destructive-personality/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/05/03/voter-reform-my-final-words/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/06/18/the-truth-behind-the-humvee-hummer/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/06/22/the-drug-cartels-and-satanic-cults/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/07/13/why-is-hard-currency-disappearing/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/07/20/can-we-win-it-all-back/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/08/06/why-is-america-the-land-of-the-middleman/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/08/27/lance-armstrong-revisited/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/09/21/where-are-the-illegal-immigrants-being-shipped-to/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/10/15/who-is-alinsky-and-how-is-he-screwing-up-our-country/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/10/22/did-iraq-have-weapons-of-mass-destruction/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/11/05/memorial-to-the-military-personnel-killed-in-the-war-on-terrorism-afghanistan/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/11/09/memorial-to-the-military-personnel-killed-in-the-war-on-terrorism-iraq-part-one/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/11/09/memorial-to-the-military-personnel-killed-in-the-war-on-terrorism-iraq-part-two/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/11/16/what-is-the-nuremberg-code-and-how-does-it-affect-us-today/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/11/19/celibacy-in-religion-is-it-natural/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/01/07/the-low-down-on-charities-and-financial-aid/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/11/27/dominion-voting-system-exposed/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/11/24/why-doc-holiday-epitomizes-americas-indomitable-spirit/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/11/13/voter-fraud-in-2020-how-will-effect-future-elections/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/11/11/veteran-suicides-where-we-failed/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/10/21/what-happened-to-seal-team-six/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/12/04/what-will-become-of-our-capitalistic-society/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/06/voting-in-america-in-the-era-of-the-pandemic/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/10/22/campaign-funding-disparity-between-democrats-and-republicans/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/09/why-the-left-socialist-and-communist-hate-religion/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/13/campaigning-for-public-office-in-the-age-of-the-coronavirus/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/06/23/restaurants-and-buffets-in-the-age-of-covid/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/10/02/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-jehovah-witness/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/05/are-we-a-nation-of-wimps-why-all-the-counseling/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/11/are-their-inequalities-in-salaries-for-movie-stars-based-on-sex/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/11/is-the-disparity-in-salaries-based-on-sex-a-thing-of-the-past/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/15/has-our-re-opening-been-intentionally-sabotaged/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/08/01/zombie-apocalypse-our-future/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/10/07/president-trump-is-being-accused-of-not-accepting-a-loss-in-the-2020-election/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/27/who-controls-the-voting-process/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/27/voter-fraud-with-mail-in-ballots-fact-or-fiction/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/26/polls-how-accurate-are-they/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/09/voting-along-party-lines-is-old-school/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/08/23/what-happens-to-president-trump-if-he-wins-the-election-but-he-loses-the-senate/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/08/06/voting-in-november/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/18/can-president-trump-win-again-in-2020/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/07/10/if-you-are-voting-for-biden-consider-psychiatric-help/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/08/05/can-american-win-the-war-for-the-world-market/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/08/13/why-are-an-ever-increasing-number-of-american-citizens-relinquishing-their-citizenship/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/09/voting-along-party-lines-is-old-school/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/15/ufos-what-is-our-government-not-telling-us/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/21/end-of-days/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/09/22/do-we-need-military-bases-in-every-country/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2020/12/25/navarro-2020-election-report-examined/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/01/01/did-brad-parscale-almost-bankrupt-the-trump-2020-election/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/02/02/what-gives-people-the-right/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/02/04/the-origins-of-the-term-gaslighting/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/03/16/election-reform/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/03/16/voter-fraud-in-2020-revisited/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/03/19/is-the-stock-market-only-for-the-big-boys/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/03/23/the-history-of-unions-in-america/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/03/30/the-chinese-and-mexican-drug-war-with-america/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/04/23/are-reverse-mortgages-legit/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/04/27/does-tiger-woods-have-a-self-destructive-personality/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/05/03/voter-reform-my-final-words/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/06/18/the-truth-behind-the-humvee-hummer/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/06/22/the-drug-cartels-and-satanic-cults/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/07/13/why-is-hard-currency-disappearing/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/07/20/can-we-win-it-all-back/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/08/06/why-is-america-the-land-of-the-middleman/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/08/27/lance-armstrong-revisited/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/09/21/where-are-the-illegal-immigrants-being-shipped-to/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/10/15/who-is-alinsky-and-how-is-he-screwing-up-our-country/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/10/22/did-iraq-have-weapons-of-mass-destruction/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/11/05/memorial-to-the-military-personnel-killed-in-the-war-on-terrorism-afghanistan/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/11/09/memorial-to-the-military-personnel-killed-in-the-war-on-terrorism-iraq-part-one/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/11/09/memorial-to-the-military-personnel-killed-in-the-war-on-terrorism-iraq-part-two/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/11/16/what-is-the-nuremberg-code-and-how-does-it-affect-us-today/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2021/11/19/celibacy-in-religion-is-it-natural/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/01/07/the-low-down-on-charities-and-financial-aid/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/01/21/who-was-ultimately-responsible-for-the-pearl-harbor-tragedy/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/01/25/was-9-11-avoidable/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/03/01/what-is-build-back-better-no-really/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/03/08/gun-confiscation-is-it-legal-it-happened-in-2005/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/04/01/air-force-one-revealed/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/04/08/what-is-the-blm/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/04/19/wheres-the-gold-is-fort-knox-empty%ef%bf%bc/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/04/29/ms-13-are-they-from-hell/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/05/20/religious-dogma-how-it-has-altered-the-world-even-today/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/06/24/what-is-up-with-5g-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/07/08/why-are-we-returning-to-the-seventies/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/07/15/who-is-behind-the-great-replacement-theory-movement-and-where-will-it-take-us/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/08/12/are-we-in-a-recession/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/09/12/should-england-shed-its-monarchy/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/09/13/ten-words-to-live-by/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/09/20/what-is-there-to-love-and-hate-about-our-country/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/09/16/9-11-revisited/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/09/27/our-income-tax-rate-in-1916-was-1-what-happened/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/11/18/what-does-having-transgender-surgery-mean-to-the-recipient/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/12/06/cults-what-the-hell/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/12/16/why-the-red-wave-never-happened/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/12/20/would-we-be-better-off-without-the-federal-reserve-did-they-kill-jfk/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2022/12/23/hybrid-cars-anyone/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2023/01/27/afghanistan-echoes-of-our-past-in-vietnam/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2023/02/24/the-economic-disaster-of-the-pandemic-response/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2023/03/14/what-has-happened-to-our-weapons-left-behind-in-afghanistan/
https://common-sense-in-america.com/2023/04/18/is-cryptocurrency-nothing-but-an-elaborate-ponzi-scheme/
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