This book examines slavery from its start on through the Civil War and then afterwards. There are a lot of really good photographs.
One of the important things the book points out is that slavery did not start with the U.S. Slavery has a very, very long history in Europe, Africa and Asia. Blacks were taken from Africa to Latin America and the Caribbeans as slaves in the 1500's, well before they were taken to the South.
Also, during wars the winning nation would tend to take slaves from the defeated nation. Another thing the book notes is that, in the U.S., wealthy free Blacks sometimes bought Blacks as their own slaves. It wasn't a huge business, but it still did go on.
A very important part of the book deals with post-Civil War Southern society. Slavery was outlawed, but the whites in the South, through their control of the economics (sharecropping, etc), and through the use of the Jim Crow laws that were passed did their best to force Blacks back into a condition as near as slavery as possible. It was almost a hundred years before any actual major civil rights legislation was passed and put into effect.
This is a really fascinating book.
Main Index
Yadult Index
