Blacks Were Enslaved Well into the 1960s

[octoberlib]

Historian and genealogist Antoinette Harrell has uncovered cases of African Americans still living as slaves 100 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. The 57-year-old Louisiana native has dedicated more than 20 years to peonage research. Through her work, she's unearthed painful stories in Southern states like Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Florida. Over a series of interviews, she told Justin Fornal about how she became an expert of modern slavery in the United States.




One day a woman familiar with my work approached me and said, “Antoinette, I know a group of people who didn’t receive their freedom until the 1950s.” She had me over to her house where I met about 20 people, all who had worked on the Waterford Plantation in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. They told me they had worked the fields for most of their lives. One way or another, they had become indebted to the plantation’s owner and were not allowed to leave the property. This situation had them living their lives as 20th-century slaves. At the end of the harvest, when they tried to settle up with the owner, they were always told they didn't make it into the black and to try again next year. Every passing year, the workers fell deeper and deeper in debt. Some of those folks were tied to that land into the 1960s.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Most shocking of all was their fear. I saw time and time again, people were afraid to share their stories. They were afraid to give this information to me, even behind closed doors decades later. They believed that they might somehow get sent back to a plantation that wasn’t even operating anymore. As I would realize, people are afraid to share their stories, because in the South so many of the same white families who owned these plantations are still running local government and big businesses. They still hold the power. So the poor and disenfranchised really don’t have anywhere to share these injustices without fearing major repercussions. To most folks, it just isn’t worth the risk. So, sadly, most situations of this sort go unreported.

Six months after that meeting, I was giving a lecture on genealogy and reparations in Amite, Louisiana, when I met Mae Louise Walls Miller. Mae walked in after the lecture was over, demanding to speak with me. She walked up, looked me in the eye, and stated, “I didn’t get my freedom until 1963.”

Mae's father, Cain Wall, lost his land by signing a contract he couldn’t read that had sealed his entire family’s fate. As a young girl, Mae didn’t know that her family’s situation was different from anyone else’s. The family didn’t have TV, so Mae just assumed everyone lived the same way her brothers and sisters did. They were not permitted to leave the land and were subject to regular beatings from the land owners. When Mae got a bit older, she would be told to come up to work in the main house with her mother. Here she would be raped by whatever men were present. Most times she and her mother were raped simultaneously alongside each other.


https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/437573/blacks-were-enslaved-well-into-the-1960s?utm_campaign=sharebutton

[TheDebbieDee]

1. Wow! This is unbelieveable...

Not that I don't believe Mae but how much suffering can be inflicted on a small group of people that are isolated from the rest of society.

The people who mistreated her and her family were able to keep her family completely UNINFORMED!

Elizabeth Smart's captors also kept her away from TV and other forms of media and told her that her parents sent her away because she made bad grades - I don't think she knew that her family or the police were even looking for her til she was brought to her family...

[WhiteTara]

2. ...

No words.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

3. K&FuckingR!

[BumRushDaShow]

4. The whole system of "share-cropping" was distorted enough by some to do just that

Forever indebted to the owner and never paid enough to get out of that debt.

[octoberlib]

8. I think for some, maybe most, plantation owners sharecropping was just a way to

continue slavery.

[BumRushDaShow]

9. Yes. It was the "transition" system once slavery was "banned".

When you look at the many documentaries on this, you will find many "newly emancipated" enslaved families had no where to go, no "skills" outside of farming, and no money to buy land, so it seemed to be "win-win" to remain and get "paid" for doing what they had been doing without pay and under duress. However the "pay" quickly disappeared and resulted in debt when the families were (purposely) over-charged for seed, plow/harvesting equipment, use of animals like mules/horses (and feed for them), and housing, where their harvests would "somehow" never cover the difference, even if they produced many times as much in a season.

And what made it worse was that there was little or no beneficial agricultural practices (like crop rotation, etc) that would preserve the land, so they ended up into the '30s with infertile land (leading to FDR's co-op extension offices in every county in the U.S.).

[ProudLib72]

5. Disgusting, yes. Surprising, not particularly

There is not a doubt in my mind that there are still plenty of slaves in this country.

[Afromania]

6. "Slavery was over a long time ago"

Yea, not so long as some folks seems to think......

[Major Nikon]

7. Still going on today all over the world

Immigrants are forced to work to pay for transportation fees and living expenses. They never make it into the black.

[NCTraveler]

10. I think people would take heart if they saw...

The slave mentality that still exists today. I don’t want to call it common but have regularly come across it in central Florida. They are referred to as Plantation negros. I often speak to a guy who fits the bill. He takes care of the grounds for a drug rehab facility. Completely off the books. He does what’s asked, calls everyone as sir or ma’am, and thanks anyone who orders him around. For that he gets food, second hand clothing, a shower and a cot to sleep on. Most show him respect but he is berated on occasion. He treats those moments as if he is being educated on something important. He isn’t the only one in his family with a purely slave driven mentality.