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 discussions I've been had over the weeks since the book appeared have been powerful and moving. And with all due respect, they have forcefully contradicted the assertions of a few readers and posters on this blog that it is a mistake to bring forth these terrible aspects of our past.

The reality is that again and again I have experienced marvelously honest conversations in which African-Americans often appeared slightly astonished that whites in the room were able to discuss this past without defensiveness or anger, and in which whites found it remarkable that their black counterparts weren't hammering them with historic crimes, but expressing thanks that it was finally being honestly discussed.

All of these things convince me that America has arrived at a remarkable moment, when a frank and full accounting of the past is possible for the first time, without the reciminations and denial that have characterized so much of our national discourse on race in the past.  It has been thrilling to see that conversation unfold in so many venues over the past two months. Thank you all for being part of it.

(By the way, I'll soon be updating the calendar of events for the rest of the summer. I'll be in Washington D.C. at some point in July, back again on Oct. 5; National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta in late July; in New York during September; Universty of Virginia in late October; and several more. Details coming soon.)

DB

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.

But the book also expands beyond past research, offers a reinterpretation of events over a much longer period of time and wider geography, and demonstrates how this history directly ties to the present. It is unapologetically a challenge to the views of some conventional historians. It begins with an analysis of how the new slavery was rooted in specific events before the Civil War and follows the chain of events through the end of World War II, a full century of social history, and a period I argue we should call the "Age of Neoslavery." What most distinguishes my book, though, is that it confronts historical realities that few U.S. scholars have been able to reconcile themselves to--that huge numbers of black Americans across the South were re-enslaved through interlocking mechanisms deep into the 20th century and that these were not inevitable or accidental. Southern blacks were not merely abused, politically deprived or inconvenienced, as history has taught most of us. They were enslaved into coerced labor, by fair reckoning of the evidence. Some historians and researchers have inadvertantly minimized this reality, partly by analysis that failed to see the interconnection between forms of neoslavery, partly through a failure to tap untouched evidence in courthouses across the South, partly because this interpretation challenges some pillars of American mythology. Some have also accepted a presumption that it is impossible to re-animate the lives of the impoverished and illiterate millions of African-Americans drawn into neoslavery--or establish the severity of the limits imposed on their lives. My book builds upon the extraordinary past work of many scholars whom I enormously admire. But it rejects any suggestion that because slavery as a legally defined condition no longer existed, we cannot call the resubjugation of these African-American families what it truly was: a new slavery. And it is simply untrue that we cannot reconstruct the lives of those who were crushed by these events--and the vast scale of the injuries they received.

Historians should not be unnerved that this largely unknown past is being shared with a broad audience. Based on the exchanges here and dozens of emails I have received in recent days, few Americans understand these events--whether the interpretation offered by most scholars or mine. This is not a topic about which everything has already been said. The millions of neoslaves abandoned by history deserve many more books yet."

....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.