The UALR Joel E. Anderson Institute on Race and Ethnicity is partnering with the William H. Bowen School of Law, the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, and the National Parks Service, to host a screening of Slavery by Another Name and a Q & A session with author Douglas A. Blackmon on Friday, October 7 at 6 p.m. at the Bowen School of Law Friday Courtroom. A reception and book signing will follow. Please see details below. All welcome!
Douglas A. Blackmon is an acclaimed journalist and independent historian, who has written extensively about the American quandary of race — exploring the integration of schools during his childhood in a Mississippi Delta farm town, lost episodes of the Civil Rights movement, and, repeatedly, 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.
Slavery by Another Name is a documentary that challenges one of American’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 A. Blackmon, the film tells how even as chattel slavery came to an end in the South in 1865, thousands of African Americans were pulled back into forced labor with shocking force and brutality. 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.
