The University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law will host a free screening of the documentary “Slavery by Another Name” and a Q&A session with the author of the book that inspired the documentary on Friday, Oct. 7. 

The screening will begin at 6 p.m. in the Bowen School of Law Friday Courtroom. A reception and book signing will follow in Coyne Deans Gallery. The event is free and open to the public.

The event is sponsored by the Joel E. Anderson Institute on Race and Ethnicity, the Bowen School of Law, the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, and the National Parks Service.

“Slavery by Another Name” is a documentary that challenges one of America’s most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery in this country ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas Blackmon, the film tells how thousands of African Americans were pulled back into forced labor with shocking force and brutality after the end of slavery, according to PBS.

It was a system in which men, often guilty of no crime at all, were arrested, compelled to work without pay, repeatedly bought and sold, and coerced to do the bidding of masters. Tolerated by both the North and South, forced labor lasted well into the 20th century, until 1945.

Blackmon is an acclaimed journalist and independent historian, who has written extensively about the American quandary of race. He has explored the integration of schools during his childhood in a Mississippi Delta farm town, lost episodes of the Civil Rights movement, and the dilemma of how contemporary society should grapple with a troubled past.

“Slavery by Another Name” was a New York Times Best Seller and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in General Non-Fiction. Blackmon, along with a team of other Wall Street Journal writers, was a finalist for another Pulitzer Prize for their investigation into the causes of the 2010 BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.