Comments on: After seven long years…

By: Betty

Betty — Tue, 31 May 2011 19:55:21 +0000

I taught adult students for 42 years, and Slavery By Another Name is a continuum of the history I brought to my classroom. It is a powerful account of history that is hidden from the public until someone of stature reveals it.

By: Thad Garrison

Thad Garrison — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 18:12:12 +0000

This book is an incredible validation of the struggle of African Americans in the 20th century. Can you tell me name of the Artists signing “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” on your video? it is a beautiful rendition. Thanks again for your eye-opening research on this untold chapter of American history.

By: Gerard Burke

Gerard Burke — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:59:44 +0000

Several writers in this bog have echoed my many complicated thoughts about this disturbing but sorely needed book. I too remember being puzzled when a deacon in my church told me that his “whole community picked up and left ” in the middle of a moonless Georgia night during the 1930’s. While I entertained more benign reasons behind the nighttime journey, the grave look in his eyes and world weary look on his face told me of the vital importance of the trip and the risk being assumed by the travelers was nothing less than a matter of life or death. My wife recalls her grandmother’s story about a female relative sold into slavery in Mississippi in the late 1880s; the last her family saw of her was the forlorn look on her face as she stood chained in the back of a wagon as it trundled away. In addition, my wife often has mentioned the epic and lonely train ride her grandfather took by himself—at age 15–from Wetumpka, Alabama, to Youngstown, Ohio, around 1920. Thanks to this book, I know something of the terrifying atmosphere and bleak prospects he left behind and better understand the motives a mother would have to send her only son north (less random racial violence, better job opportunities). In my own family, my Mom recently told me that her deceased father never expected to live long because his insistence on being treated like a man would very likely get him killed sooner rather than later. Reading this book has provided a partial explanation for my late Grandfather’s fatalistic but candid views. While the horrific stories of the people depicted in “Slavery…” helped me understand the conditions that lead many African American to leave the south during the early to mid 20th century, they also suggest the often heroic choices that some people made to remain behind and continue to live with dignity and purpose in a nightmare world that threatened to swallow them up at every turn.

By: Leslie Detouche

Leslie Detouche — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:03:04 +0000

-I feel like a late bloomer having recently read “Slavery by Another Name….”. I’ve resolved that blatant forms of injustice on a group of people – eloquently described by Mr. Douglas Blackmon should be ongoing with each new reader as time allows. LD-NY

By: lee cortes

lee cortes — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 12:41:14 +0000

I am an African-American woman in my sixties whose family was part of the great migration to the north in the 1950′s. I can remember stories of families having to sneak away in the night with just what they could carry on their backs and I was always puzzled as to why this had to be. Thank you for your insight and I intend to get your book in order to be better informed.

By: Indyreader

Indyreader — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:25:57 +0000

I just saw Mr. Blackmon on a taped appearance on C-Span (4/25/09). It has always been painful for me to see photos of Blacks being hanged or tortured for no other reason than that they were caught up in a very violent and racist period of U.S. history. Whenever I read about that period of man’s inhumanity for man, I am reminded how it is remarkable, that Black Americans have managed to survive and even thrive to this day. For me, it is easy to see how free labor (slavery) contributed to building the American economy. It is more difficult to understand how anyone who truly knows the history of slavery and race relations in this country can be against economic reparations for African Americans. The logistics of such is another issue. I can not, like many Blacks and Whites, pretend that the inequities between the races, by any measure, is simply due to Blacks having lack of initiative, intelligence, etc.
What I will continue to do is ask God to allow me to continue to accept and respect all mankind reqardless of the torture (including waterboarding) and other degradating acts visited upon my ancestors. The effects of those horrendous acts of violence linger today, seen only by those who truly know the history of this country. Thank you, Mr. Blackmon, for your efforts to shed light on a very dark time in the United States.

By: Joy in Missouri

Joy in Missouri — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:35:09 +0000

Mr. Blackmon… My ache, just for reading a few lines about the book… just for looking into the eyes of those in the photographs, is beyond words. Knowing things were worse than even thought, as horrific as they were already known to be, is a hard blow to the mind. Without knowing the awful secrets of what happened, I think we understand next to nothing of today. The remnants of those awful days that still remain in obstacles between us, silences, distrust and fear are rooted in this shocking past through which, without knowing of it, we’ve sleep walked. Sometimes you just want to go to sleep again… “when will all the cruelty and pain just end?” But it won’t until we awaken to it, and know how we got here, and even where we now are. Thank you Mr. Blackmon for the lump in my throat this morning, the pressure of tears behind my eyes, the ache in my belly… for the empathy which makes us all brothers and sisters as we try to face and address this seething history and its lingering smoke in the America we all share. — I’m a 60 year old white woman with a 20 year old son, and we both stiffened into silence when we first heard you speaking about your book… There is a hunger in our land for the truth about these things. Thank you again.

By: Connell Linson

Connell Linson — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 02:06:19 +0000

By chance I happened upon the author at a recent book review. His book is consistent with the attitude and behavior I have suffered from southern whites all of my sixty-eight years.

One memory etched in my mind was a car trip the family took when I was about eight from Texas to Tennessee. We came upon this vast cotton farm in rural Arkansas. There were cotton pickers as far as the eye could see. Looking back on that scene and having the benefit of Mr. Blackmon’s revolutionary book, I can’t help but feel that those folks were subject to some form of indentured control. It could have been the old company store crime. That of eternal indebtness. But, that is for another book.

Only a white southerner could have written this book. Maybe, there is a god.

By: Terry Green

Terry Green — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:17:13 +0000

This is was very hard for a fifty year old black man to read. Horrifying,unbelievable things done to my people in the name of the law. America needs to take credit for its greedy,brutal genocidal behavior that hurt so many Black people. Shame on you!! , You captains of American industry for stealing the labor and lives of Black people your quest for money. Everyone should read this book.

By: priscilla kauffman

priscilla kauffman — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 13:35:23 +0000

I Just heard you speak about your book on c span…Great! I was surprised however that people on the panel were learning something new….haven’t they read Faulkner? This is one more example of the significance of a missing “Liberal Education”.