As I started reading I thought I was not going to have any interest at all in the story; however, after I got into the story I found myself more interested than I thought I was going to be. As I was taught also as many Americans were taught in schools or in some way that slavery ended in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation. What I came to realize is that that fundamentally really didn’t happen but after reading Douglas Blackmon’s Slavery by Another Name I now understand that slavery didn’t end until 1942—–One of these types of black codes, known as vagrancy laws, required that all African Americans prove that they are employed, rather than roaming at large. If an African American was convicted of vagrancy, they would be sentenced to a term of hard labor. Frequently, these convicts were leased out to larger companies, who required said convicts to work in their mines, mills, and fields.

Additionally, by the 1930’s, the majority of African Americans sentenced to involuntary labor were charged with crimes that were trivial and insignificant. “More than 12,500 people were arrested in Alabama in 1928 for possessing or selling alcohol during Prohibition; 2,735 were charged with vagrancy, 2,014 with gaming; 458 for leaving the farm of an employer without permission; 154 with the age-old vehicle for stopping intimate relations between blacks and whites: adultery” (375).-slavery has been known to be one of the cruelest treatments on AAFRICAN AMERICANS BUT THERE IS Something much worse than slavery which isn’t really recognized as much. The convict lease system was reported to be harsher than slavery. The oncvoct lease system was a system of penal labor practice im the southern u.s beginning with freedom of slaves at the end of the American civil war in 1865 but climaxing around 1880. Convict leasing peeked regulating codes and pig laws. These laws were started to try and bring in more convicts into the jails because at this time convict leasing had started to make great revenue.

Pig laws stated that the stealing of anything with a value of 104 or more was colossal larceny. Black codes were laws limiting the basic human rights and civil liberties of black. -These codes were easily broken because anything ws consider a crime. For example spitting on the sidewalk, talking too loud, public intoxication or not stepping off the side walk when a white person was coming across your oath, were all consider crimes and would result in a conviction. Once convicted and charged, court fees would be given to add more to the given sentence.

Even innocent blacks were pulled of the streets and placed into the convict lease system. Convict leasing was basically just another name for slavery. However the conditions were hoffifying. Approximately 800,000 blacks had fallen into incarceration due to the black codes and pig laws. Aboult half were enforce in the convict leasing system.

9000 of those in the convicted leasing system died before their realse due to diseases, lynching and harsh working conditions. They were literally worked to death.