Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Lecture - Douglas Blackmon

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 (the Daily Beast)

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Pulitzer Prize winner Douglas Blackmon explored the impact that Vanderbilt students can have on society when he delivered the 2010 Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Lecture Tuesday evening.

Blackmon introduced himself to the crowd inside Vanderbilt University Law School's Flynn Auditorium with light remarks before delving into his talk. Initially speaking on the similarities between Barack Obama and Martin Luther King, Blackmon led the audience to consider what he described as "the terrific dilemma of the past" - the nation's history of problematic race relations.

While Blackmon reviewed some of the highlights of his book, he also commented on the potential he saw in Vanderbilt students.

“Today, talking to students on campus from the (Black Student Alliance) and other student organizations, reminded me of the young, earnest, hungry minds that exist," he said. "Only though this can we learn the lessons of the past and remember what to take with us and leave behind.” (source: Inside Vandy)

2010 Vanderbilt University Law School Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Lecture - Douglas Blackmon

Springfield Race Riots 1908

Springfield, Illinois monument to the 1908 race riots.

From the Wall Street Journal, "The Tangled Racial Roots of the Illinois Capital: Lincoln's Home of Springfield, an Early Haven for African-Americans, Erupted in Riots That It Has Only Recently Revisited," by Douglas A. Blackmon, on 20 January 2009: SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- In a modest home on a street a few miles from the spot where Barack Obama began his bid to become the first black U.S. president, 85-year-old Charles Werner keeps tucked away a cardboard box of relics from his grandfather's tenure as county sheriff here a hundred years ago.

Among the old photographs and worn shackles is the brass casing of a rifle shell, fashioned into a lapel pin and engraved with the sheriff's name, the date of Aug. 14, 1908, and the words "Springfield Race War."

It was on that day that Springfield erupted in racial violence. For two days, thousands of white residents of a city that had been a key stop on the Underground Railroad and the hometown of Abraham Lincoln rampaged through the streets.

Enflamed after the arrest of two black men -- one for the murder of a white man and another for the alleged rape of a white woman -- they looted and destroyed the black business district, burned dozens of black-owned homes and attacked nearly every black man they encountered. Two African-American men with no connection to the alleged crimes were lynched. Stunned that such an event could have occurred in Springfield, a group of early civil-rights leaders organized the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People the following year.

The election of the nation's first African-American president has stirred some influential intellectuals -- black and white -- to argue that Mr. Obama's inauguration marks the moment when blacks in the U.S. should begin abandoning past grievances for slavery, discrimination and racial violence. On the campaign trail, even Mr. Obama and his aides often avoided extended discussion of race. They made it clear he didn't wish to be perceived simply as the first black major party candidate for the White House.

"It is simply no longer the case that the essence of black American life is racial victimization and disenfranchisement, a curse and a condemnation, a destiny based on color," wrote Charles Johnson, a National Book Award-winning English professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.

But Springfield has done precisely the opposite and revisited its past. After decades of mostly silence about 1908, thousands of city residents over the past year have banded together to mark the centennial of the most painful event in town history.

"We have to acknowledge when wrongs have been committed and do what we can to right those wrongs," said Kathryn Harris, a librarian at Springfield's Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the allure of Lincoln's association and jobs in bustling coal mines and factories made Springfield a magnet for African-Americans fleeing deepening racial oppression across the Southern states. By 1900, Springfield had the highest percentage of black residents of any city in Illinois.

But the influx also stirred racial resentments among whites. On Aug. 14, 1908, after a white woman in Springfield claimed to have been raped by a black man, large crowds gathered outside the county jail, intent on lynching the man accused of the rape and another black prisoner charged with killing a local white man, according to historical accounts. The woman later admitted her allegation of rape was fabricated.

Without the crowd realizing what was happening, the sheriff -- Mr. Werner's grandfather, also named Charles Werner -- spirited the defendants to safety. After the mob learned the African-American prisoners were gone, thousands of whites swirled through the city for two days, looting and shooting within sight of the old state capitol building where Lincoln proclaimed 50 years earlier that "a house divided against itself cannot stand."

By the time 4,000 state militiamen re-established order, most of the black residential areas of the city were razed. More than 40 houses were burned. The African-American business district was gutted. A black barber was lynched when he tried to fight off attackers. Five white men had been killed in stampedes, unintentional shootings or militia gunfire.

The last person to die was an elderly black man named William Donnegan. He had once been a shoe maker and was reputed to have had a passing acquaintance with Abraham Lincoln. By 1908, he was one of the city's most prominent and prosperous African-Americans, with real-estate holdings, a large home and a white wife. On the second day of the attacks, a mob dragged him from his home, cut his throat and hung him from a tree.

Lincoln Family Home in Springfield, Illinois

The black community in Springfield struggled to recover. "Everyone was aware of it. But no one spoke of it," said Rudy Davenport, a longtime local NAACP leader. "It was sort of like...just silence."

According to many African-Americans, Springfield as late as the 1960s was still following racial practices similar to the South, including restrictions on where blacks could eat in restaurants, sit in theaters or use the city swimming pool. In the late 1980s, Mr. Davenport and others successfully sued to force greater representation of African-American voters in local elections. In recent years, black leaders pushed for more minority police officers and firemen. The city responded by adding special recruiters and changing its hiring process.

Abraham Lincoln's presidential library. Springfield, Illionis

As the 100th anniversary of the riot approached in 2007, many black residents began pushing for an event to mark the centennial. The mayor, Timothy J. Davlin, who is white, appointed a commission to coordinate a commemoration. "We all know our rich history here," Mr. Davlin said this month. "And it's not all pretty. But it's part of our history whether you like it or not."

Not everyone in Springfield was certain that was a good idea. Even some prominent black pastors had reservations about stirring up difficult memories, according to Rev. Wesley McNeese, pastor of New Mission Church of God.

Stories about the events in the local State Journal-Register attracted hostile commentary. One posting on the paper's Web site called the plans a "pathetic exercise in digging up the past." Another wrote that the commemoration "is just stirring up trouble and tension between groups of citizens. This happened 100 years ago!"

The backbone of the remembrance became a series of multiracial religious gatherings held at various churches each month. Dubbed "solemn assemblies," the services ended with prayer sessions at one of the riot sites.

A few minutes before the first assembly last spring, hardly any participants had arrived. Beverly Peters, one of the key organizers, worried that the plan might be a bust. At the last minute, several hundred Springfield residents showed up. As the year progressed, larger crowds appeared.

Illinois State Map

At the same time, other organizations began sponsoring additional events. Local Springfield College-Benedictine University hosted speeches and forums by historians and authors. The city renamed a stretch of streets through the riot area Reconciliation Way. On the anniversary of the start of the riot, a local civic club held a mock retrial of the man tried but acquitted of the murder in 1908.

When the final church service convened, Mayor Davlin surprised the crowd by issuing a formal apology to the African-American residents of the city for the 1908 riot. In early February, a $300,000 state-funded statue showing scenes of the riot will be unveiled.

Now that the commemoration is largely over, Springfield residents are debating what it accomplished. The answers aren't clear. Mayor Davlin says an honest accounting of the riot has helped ease the way for efforts to increase the number of black police officers and improve educational opportunities. He also says the commemorative markers and interest in the race riot helped set the stage for this year's bicentennial celebration of Lincoln's birth in 1809 -- and were good for tourism.

Mr. Davenport hopes the remembrance process will make it more likely that efforts to tackle issues facing African-Americans, such as lower pay, crime and academic performance in schools, will be viewed as problems facing the city -- not just African-Americans.

Charles Werner, the grandson of the sheriff, says he thinks the long discussion may finally put the riot to rest. "I think it's going to be dropped," he said. "Maybe it will come back up again in another 100 years." (source: Wall Street Journal, Douglas Blackmon)

Springfield Race Riots 1908

Alabama Town Blocks Slavery Documentary Filming

Variety reported on Jun. 4, 2011, "Town blocks 'Slavery' doc: Filmmaker Pollard disputes order," by Addie Morfoot:

Veteran documentary editor, producer and director Sam Pollard has seen a lot during his 30 years in the business, but what happened in Centreville, Ala., in March, while filming his latest doc, "Slavery by Another Name" for PBS, caught him by surprise.

Based on the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Wall Street Journal writer Douglas Blackmon, which challenges the belief that slavery ended with 1863's Emancipation Proclamation, the doc recounts how in the years following the Civil War, new forms of forced labor emerged in the American South, trapping hundreds of thousands of African Americans in a brutal system that lasted until the onset of World War II.

But Centreville mayor Tom Bamberg blocked Pollard's crew from filming in a local park.

During their seven-day Alabama shoot in late March, the crew filmed in various locations in and around Centreville, but when it came time to shoot a reenactment scene in the town's Cahaba Park, they were told that the park's pavilions were rented out and the grounds were unavailable.

Blackmon then contacted Bamberg via email asking for specific rental times and for permission to shoot in areas of the park away from the pavilions.

Bamberg's emailed response was: "I do object to this being filmed in our park. I also object to it being filmed in our city. We are a quiet, small town, and I don't want this to cause controversy."

Pollard, who has worked on numerous race-related docs, including Spike Lee's "When the Levees Broke" and "4 Little Girls," as well as HBO's feature length documentary, "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama," says he was startled by Bamberg's words.

"I've worked on a lot of documentaries, and sometimes you run into people who don't want to be interviewed," Pollard says. "But this was the first time a community, led by the mayor, said that we were not welcome. It was surprising, because this is 2011, but I guess (Bamberg) felt that we were going to open up a can of worms that he didn't want opened."While Blackmon contends that the city's decision to bar the crew to film from Cahaba Park was illegal and a violation of First Amendment rights, Centreville city attorney Mike Hobson maintains that Bamberg's initial explanation and not the mayor's subsequent email was the real reason behind the park's off-limits status.

While Hobson denies that Pollard was banned from filming in the park, he did add that "they wanted to film with actors dressed in old-time prison garb, and he wanted to depict those actors as being slaves who were tied to a stake driven into the ground. He wanted to do that in a public park on a weekend when other people were using the park for recreational purposes. We didn't think that that was appropriate, and we felt like that would cause controversy. So, yes, the mayor had a problem with that."

Hobson then explained that the crew needed a license, which Blackmon contests.

The specific scene, which Pollard says was a reenactment on a farm using a historic structure in the backdrop, was subsequently shot at another location.

"This is the first time in the 10 years since I started researching and writing the book that the door was so overtly slammed in my face," Blackmon says.

The doc, being produced by Twin Cities Public Television, with an estimated budget of $1.5 million, received funding through grants provided by orgs including the National Endowment for the Humanities and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

"Slavery by Another Name" is scheduled to air on PBS in 2012. (source: Variety)

Slavery by Another Name: The Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

The Water Cure

The 'Water Cure'

By: Douglas A. Blackmon

In 1895, Mr. Hurt bought a group of bankrupt forced-labor mines and furnaces on Lookout Mountain, near the Tennessee state line. Guards there had recently adopted for punishment of the workers the "water cure," in which water was poured into the nostrils and lungs of prisoners. (The technique, preferred because it allowed miners to "go to work right away" after punishment, became infamous in the 21st century as "waterboarding.")

An elderly black man named Ephraim Gaither testified during the state's hearings as to the fate of a 16-year-old boy at a lumber camp owned by Mr. Hurt and operated by his son George Hurt. The teenager was serving three months of hard labor for an unspecified misdemeanor.

"He was around the yard sorter playing and he started walking off," Mr. Gaither recounted. "There was a young fellow, one of the bosses, up in a pine tree and he had his gun and shot at the little negro and shot this side of his face off," Mr. Gaither said as he pointed to the left side of his face. The teenager ran into the woods and died. Days later, a dog appeared in the camp dragging the boy's arm in its mouth, Mr. Gaither said. The homicide was never investigated.

Called to testify before the commission, Mr. Hurt lounged in the witness chair, relaxed and unapologetic for any aspect of the sprawling businesses.

Another witness before the commission, former chief warden Jake Moore, testified that no prison guard could ever "do enough whipping for Mr. Hurt." "He wanted men whipped for singing and laughing," Mr. Moore told the panel.

In response to the revelations, Gov. Hoke Smith called a special session of the state Legislature, which authorized a public referendum on the fate of the system. In October 1908, Georgia's nearly all-white electorate voted by a 2-to-1 margin to abolish the system as of March 1909. Without prison labor, business collapsed at Chattahoochee Brick. Production fell by nearly 50% in the next year. Total profit dwindled to less than $13,000.

The apparent demise of Georgia's system of leasing prisoners seemed a harbinger of a new day. But the harsher reality of the South was that the new post-Civil War neoslavery was evolving -- not disappearing.

source: Wall Street Journal, 29March2008, by Douglas A. Blackmon