I’ve heard from dozens of readers in response to the broadcasts on C-Span of one my presentations about Slavery by Another Name. It’s tremendous that so many people are ready and even anxious for a more candid discussion about these terrible events in U.S. history in the early 20th century.

As I’ve traveled, discussing the book and meeting readers, a stream of African-Americans have related to me how the book made them reassess their own family histories–and the stories of ancestors or acquaintances.  Like Phillip Johnson, and so many others on the blog, an African-American woman who talked to me after a speech in Atlanta today, a letter from Virginia that just arrived–so many people tell me they were uncertain about, or never believed, accounts passed down by forebears which seemed to suggest that families were still being held as neo-slaves in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.  Then they read the book and realize that in fact the old stories are very likely to be true–that thousands of people were living in a state of involuntary servitude well into the lives of millions of Americans who are still alive today.

The reaction to the book has been so gratifying this past week. I’ve heard from dozens of people, white and black, who have their own stories of how Neoslavery touched the lives of their families. I’ll start posting some of those messages over the next few days.

A blog at NPR.com connected to my appearance on Talk of the Nation drew a long and energetic exchange. Some of the posters were historians wanting to make sure that other scholars’ research into issues in my book weren’t overlooked. Below is the response I posted to that traffic:

“To Kathleen Murray and Alex Lichtenstein, I hope you’ll read “Slavery by Another Name” and see that it energetically acknowledges many scholars, such as Pete Daniel (“who wrote the seminal work on twentieth-century peonage”), Mary Ellen Curtin (“no work rivals the research” for prior to 1900), Jack Bergstresser, the industrial archeologist who first postulated the identities of those buried in the great unmmarked burial grounds on the edge of Birmingham–each of whom gave me valued advice during the seven years of work on this project.

….this book finally appears.

I couldn’t have hoped for a better moment in our country’s national discussion than now. Regardless of anyone’s preferences among presidential candidates, the dialogue in the past week spurred by Sen. Barack Obama’s speech on race has reintroduced a seminal topic to millions of young Americans.

Hopefully, Slavery by Another Name can contribute to a more clear understanding of how much more recently the most grave injustices against African-Americans remained commonplace. Acknowledging the terrors and tragedies that twisted the life of Green Cottenham, and ultimately killed him as a slave in 1908, is essential to understanding the racial divide in the U.S. today.

To anyone who has followed this project from its inception with a story in The Wall Street Journal in 2001–especially my wife and kids–I’d like to say thanks. To anyone who reads the book, or hears me through the media, I hope you’ll bring that national dialogue–and anything you might know about the re-enslavement of black Americans–to this blog.