Slavery Today?

My recent article on slavery, abortion and states’ rights promised a follow-up. This is it.

My college lady friend was volunteering at a community medical clinic in 1981 for her pre-med program. The clinic was in a very poor minority neighborhood. They educated the volunteers and patients about the history of oppression as part of their mission.

One day, my lady friend came home and told me that there are slaves working on potato farms on Long Island. I was not sure if this was a learning moment for me or a moment to think these people were insane. With no easy way to research it I filed it away for decades.

Then, in September 2003, National Geographic Magazine had a feature story by Andrew Cockburn titled “21st Century Slaves.” Yes, there really are about 27 million 21st century slaves. And about a million of them are right here in the Land of the Free. The U.S.

What is slavery? Very simple: The worker is not paid. The worker cannot leave.

Then, in March 2008, I watched a BookTV talk by Douglas Blackmon about his book, Slavery by Another Name. He explained how slavery for Black Americans did not end with the Civil War. It did not officially end until right after Pearl Harbor. In 1941. Why then?

After the Civil War, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution were supposed to end slavery and guarantee citizenship and voting rights to former slaves. But there was a loophole. The 13th Amendment allowed slavery “as a punishment for crime.”

They just had to invent new “crimes” to keep slavery going. Notably: Vagrancy laws. Prohibiting being poor, loitering, or simply “suspicious.” Vague laws selectively enforced against Black people. Allowing hundreds of thousands of Blacks to be arrested and convicted of a crime.

They were not sent to jail for this trivial offense. Much worse: They were “rented” to businesses and plantation owners to be used as forced labor. U.S. Steel was one of many such businesses that paid $12 a month for slave labor.

The situation for these slaves was far worse than for slaves before the Civil War. An antebellum slave was a valuable piece of property. About the same as a Mercedes car today. They may have been mistreated, but they still had to be cared for. But these “neoslaves” had no such protection. They were sent into coal mines and worked to total exhaustion, severe illness, and often death. Similar to the Nazi slave labor camps.

A woman wrote to President Theodore Roosevelt begging him to save her brother from this fate. It was filed away and never prosecuted. The FBI claimed there were no actual statutes against such slavery. Just the 13th Amendment.

It took his distant cousin Franklin Roosevelt to act after Pearl Harbor. FDR argued before Congress that the Japanese would use U.S. mistreatment of Blacks as propaganda. And Blacks might rightly ally with the Japanese against the U.S government to secure a better deal. He ordered FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to prosecute these cases. Hoover was a notorious right-wing ideologue, but he grudgingly complied.

So why are there still slaves in the U.S. today? In the case of the potato farms, the workers lived in isolation. They had to buy everything from the “company store.” Prices and wages were set to guarantee inescapable debt. Why didn’t they flee? Occasionally they did and were shot. It does not take many such illegal shootings for the slaves to fear trying to escape.

We hear lurid stories of sex trafficking, some of which are true and some of which are not. Many sex workers are voluntary. But many slaves are working in slaughterhouses, hotels, and restaurants.

Slavery exists in other forms today. Forced marriage holds another 22 million slaves worldwide.

Most Americans are oblivious to how prisoners are treated and used for private profit. If prisoners were paid market wages by law, there would be less incentive for such abuse. The U.S. leads the world in imprisoning its citizens.

Teaching this history is being banned in some states. And it is not just in the past.