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Watching this program on PBS last night blew my mind. I think that I am reasonably educated and informed on US history, but this coverage of post Civil War history of slavery totally escaped my attention. I was certainly aware of chain gangs and the severe repression of African Americans after the Reconstruction Period, but not this new version of slavery that corporations exploited--which is precisely why I never came across this subject before--it reveals this heretofore carefully guarded dirty secret! This is a must-see film--especially for all Americans.
It is also clear to me that the Civil War was mostly about the rising class of northern industrialists wanting to free up labor that was tied up in the ownership of southern slaveholders, not because of any moral considerations. They simply covered their nefarious plans with the morality of "freeing the slaves" just like they do today when they launch wars for "humanitarian" reasons. By freeing the slaves after that dreadful Civil War, they were then able to exploit African-Americans under the system of convict labor which skirted around the Constitutional prohibition of slavery. And again, one can see the same parallels with this current period of globalization in which capitalists have removed restrictions on moving anywhere in the world to gain access to cheap, exploited labor.
Convict labor was a system that leased African-Americans (essentially a sale), who were arrested for all sorts of silly crimes, to commercial interests between about 1875 and well into the 20th century. Usually, the criminal offense was a contrived one: loosely defined vagrancy or even changing employers without permission.
Unfortunately, it appears to me that the program was only scheduled for yesterday evening in my area and through my cable provider. But you should check here (under "About the Film" tab, select when to watch) for broadcast times by provider in your area. Also, you can watch the whole program online at the above link, or purchase the DVD from PBS.
(Note: 1-17-2012 - A few days after writing this post I realized that I had heard about this phenomenon during the late 1960s from black nationalist spokespeople. But with no other authoritative sources to corroborate these reports, I think I concluded that the black nationalists exaggerated the extent to which convict labor was used by corporations during that period.)
