Slavery by Another Name

Slavery by Another Name
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Slavery by Another Name
Slave by Another Name is a documentary film based on Douglas Blackmon’s book, with the same title. The film invited eight historians, four descendants, and two survivors to share their knowledge about what African-American People experienced during the civil war until the end of the second world war. The film focuses on how the White Americans manage to pull back millions of African-Americans on forced laboring even though slavery ended in 1865. The experiences of these people are discriminatory and inhumane. At present, we have heard of news describing the same situation of people of color in different circumstances or scenarios. These occurrences happen despite the long-standing spiteful history of mistakes that should not have been repeated. Therefore, as the humans of the current era, we must prevent, at all cost, history from repeating itself.
The film starts with a message of a young black woman named Georgia to the president of the USA. Georgia has not heard anything from her brother since a white American hired her brother. From then, the film showed scenes of Black Americans getting tortured as the narrator explains that it is the most shameful part of American history (Pollard, 2012, 0:00:49). As the story unfolds, historians share how dark this era was to the African-American people in the south. Some Black Americans cannot even tell their children what they have experienced during this time. Sharon Malone is the daughter of one of the survivors, and she stated that they are like adopted children wondering what their ancestors have endured and survived (Pollard, 2012, 0:03:06).
Many of them thought that freedom was granted as a permanent reward for their sufferings. However, the misfortunes have continued after such events. Despite these, the African-Americans continued to fight for equal rights, allowing them to gain the right to suffrage and gradually permitting them to own or claim lands and build schools for their future. From a personal perspective, these hardships need recognition because the amount of hard work they have placed into working for what is just was immense, so much so that it is incomparable to many things. The determination of one person of color had influenced the thinking, and the collaborative effort helped them raise the morale of each other. Consequently, this resulted in their resolution to achieve their aspirations.
The problem became evident as the White Americans feared that Black Americans would do something as revenge for what they have done on their once owned people. This fear caused white men to create and execute a plan to control the progressing Black Americans. They created laws that will pin down the Black men and make it difficult to sell their products. Thus, they began to reign and shifted the balance allowing white men to rule in the south again. This part of the movie makes an audience wonder how difficult it is for white Americans to accept that Black Americans are also human. They also cannot admit that there are no superior races and everyone should have equal rights. They convicted many Black Americans with vague charges like walking aside on the railroad or selling their farm products after dark. The most infamous law that white men created were the pig law that enhances penalty from misdemeanor offenses to felony offenses. Since the white men cannot have slaves, the capitalist had a massive problem with human resources. Because of this, they came up with the idea of "convict leasing," where capitalists hire convicted people to do the workforce that they lost due to the law that the radical reconstruction created. Convict leasing became more efficient because they can force prisoners to do what they command them to do since they are convicted. According to the 13th amendment, no one can enslave or involuntary labor an African-American people (Pollard, 2012, 0:11:59).
As the decades passed, the country reunites, but black Americans are still uncertain of what will happen. After a civil war, the state outlawed the peonage law or debt servitude law. Theodore Roosevelt agrees to have a federal investigation into peonage in the Alabama counties of Shelby Kusa and Tallapoosa. As the investigation goes, John Davis became a witness in the peonage happening in Alabama. According to John Davis, he forcedly signed a contract that contains permission to whip, confined, and even trade as long as the debt is unpaid. John Pace, Fletcher Turner, and William and George Cosby are ring leaders and wealthy farmers that practice peonage. They have their people testify to have the justice the...