Slavery After The Civil War

In his book 'Slavery By Another Name,' author Douglas Blackmon highlights a system of de facto slavery that lasted in the United States long after abolition--in some cases, well into the 1940s. In Alabama alone, an estimated 200,000 blacks were forced to work as servants or in coal mines and lumber yards. Tens of thousands of African-American men were routinely arrested on trivial charges and misdemeanors, fined outrageously and then ‘sold’ to corporations to work off their fines. In the early 1930s, John Spizack had exclusive access to photograph forced-labor camps all over the South. He captured this photo of an unidentified man, tied to a pickax, a typical punishment for blacks living in these conditions.