Mr. President I have a brother about 14 years old. A man hired him from me, and I heard of him no more.
He went and sold them to McGreen they has been working him in prison for 12 months.
Asked him to let me have him, but he, he won't let him go.
For a period of nearly 80 years between the Civil War and World War II, black southerners were no longer slaves
but they were not yet free.
In one of the most shameful and little-known chapters of American history
generations of black southerners were forced to labor against their will
from almost the first moment white southerners were
responding to try to put African Americans back into a position as close to slavery as they possibly could.
The Old South and what was quickly becoming the New South could not proceed without the work of African-Americans
But if you had something for free in the past you don't necessarily want to pay for it now.
It was a straight simple exploitative system.
There's only power. There's only force, and there's only brutality.
What happened in that period of time was so much more terrible than anything most Americans recognize or understand today.
The depth of poverty the inability of African Americans to access any of the mechanisms of wealth,
achievement, and growth, they're all rooted in this terroristic kind of regime that that existed in so many places.
Their ability to have what we call the American dream,
that is what has been stolen from black folks all through the south and that
legacy has to be understood so that people will be able to speak to it and give our ancestors for us
 
 
