No, the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t do the trick. Slavery is evidently alive and well.
The news is regularly filled with stories of people being coerced into slavery. They are domestic servants, farm and factory laborers, street beggers and prostitutes.
They all have something in common besides the obvious fact that they receive little or no remuneration for working around the clock, seven days a week. Often, they don’t get fed. Many are beaten, threatened and sexually abused.
And most are so frightened, confused and disoriented that they don’t even attempt to escape their masters.
Unlike the slaves of the old South who toiled openly in the fields and whose bondage was protected by law, today’s slaves are mostly invisibile to an apathetic public.
There are people being exploited as slaves in Westchester and other suburban enclaves, but we just don’t see them. Take the case of Joseph Yannai, a 65-year-old restaurant guide owner who was arrested last month for allegedly making a slave out of a 21-year-old Hungarian woman he hired as a personal assistant.
The woman’s alleged victimization followed a familiar pattern. She simply didn’t know what she was getting into when she was “hired.” Quickly, she discovered that her communication with the outside world would be severely limited. She was paid nothing and had no access to transportation.
Yannai was accused of using threats to coerce into giving him sexual favors.
Sadly, none of this is much of a surprise to Ron Soodalter, who, along with Kevin Bales, co-authored “The Slave Next Door,” a book (University of California Press) that examines human trafficking and slavery in modern America. It’s an eye-opener.
Soodalter will be my guest on my “High Noon” radio program, Thursday at 12 noon. That’s 1460 AM and wvox.com.
5 Comments
Phil…. Right up until WWII negro convicts were used as chattel labor in the mines & foundries of Birmingham Alabama. The civic trick used to get all the free labor, was to sweep the negro juke areas on Saturday night, and arrest a couple of dozen drunks.These guys would get 6 months or a year term, and be sent to the foundries, gratis. I imagine the sheriff who arrested them got paid for the favor by the foundry owners.
So do not diss the unions.
The alternatives are all much badder.
This completely misses your important point, but I’ve always thought the true end of slavery should be attributed more to the 13th Amendment than to the Emancipation Proclamation.
Jim, you’re right about the 13th amendment as opposed to the Emancipation Proclamation, which only applied to areas not controlled by the union and was meant to encourage rebellion against confederate authorities.
This slavery issue is appalling. It’s probably a by-product of the fact that more people want to come live here than are legally allowed to, so people who are here illegally are vulnerable to exploitation since they effectively don’t have protection under the law.
Looking at it more broadly, many more Americans have voluntarily, to some degree, chosen to enslave themselves through workaholism. I realize this isn’t the issue you raised, but it’s also a concern. Many people are unable to get away from work, ever, due to the proliferation of electronic devices/leashes that create the expectation that they will always be available to deal with work issues, whether they have a day off, are on vacation, etc. This is a watered-down form of slavery in some sense.
Once the enclosure of the commons ended historic English Magna Carta freehold rights by granting all the land to nobles, the common man in England was a menace, and was treated as such. Those not in a labor contract to a nobleman were subject to arrest as vagabonds. Most of those convicted as vagabonds were transported to the “West Indies” (actually Maryland).. and their indentured servitude sold by the ship captains to the highest bidder at the docks.
All those pretty stone walls you see in New England were actually built by gangs of English convicts, often led by overseers who were the landless relatives, and/or illegitimate sons of the “upright” colonial farmers. So even the boss-men were half-slaves, themselves. Abe Lincoln’s forebears were from this class.
The tremendous drive to go out to new territories was based on the constrained and freedomless reality of living in a rich man’s 13 colonies, where only the gentry were considered “human”.Even after the revolution, the unwashed masses of western Massachusetts, and western Pennsylvania rebelled in Shay’s rebellion, and the Whiskey rebellion, with Mr. Washington pushing hard for a constitution, to defeat the much-to-be-feared communizing tendencies of lower class “regulators”, many of whom had been members of his colonial army.
The use of black slaves became big, only after the supply of white slaves dried up, when England began sending their convicts to Australia.
Large swaths of Africa still practice overt slavery. Often entire tribes are slaves-en-masse to other tribes. On the Indian subcontinent, the institution of the caste system enforces defacto slavery as the highest embodiment of Hindu culture. The Romans, the Greeks, and the Europeans of the middle ages all considered slavery the norm.
So never undervalue being free. It’s a very unusual status. Through most of history, the vast majority of humans have not been free.
And….Don’t ever make the mistake of blaming slavery on American whites.
They are quite simply not guilty.
(Unless your name is Washington, or Jefferson).
Hi David,
Thanks for the backup re: 13th Amendment.
Some do go too far in the other direction, though, and claim that the E.P. had zero practical effect. It did free people who were in areas that the Union Army captured, and it did apply to fugitives who were being held as “property” in some places in the north.