Summary Of Slavery By Another Name

Slavery by Another Name This video starts soon after the 13th amendment is ratified and slavery is abolished (at least on paper). The cotton economy was severely hurt from the new need of payed labor. The farm owners had about half of their investments in slave labor. With an overall poor economy at the time as well, some white people saw all the new free black people as competition for work. There was white resistance against a bi-racial government. New laws were being made to target black people, including the pit laws. These laws made some non-offenses have serious repercussions. With these laws, police could easily target black people and give them severe punishments, such as talking loudly in public. These severe punishments typically …show more content…
The documentary focuses on a couple different families and people throughout the film, as well as migrant workers in general. To give some background on to the poor living conditions and hard work these workers do, a reverend said that farm owners “used to own slaves, now they rent them”. This was in reference to migrant workers. We learn how migrant workers work for about half of the year and make about 900 dollars on average. This can fluctuate largely depending on how well the crop is selling and the quality of the crop that year. There are many ways that farmers can take advantage of migrant workers. One of the first ways mentioned is that migrant workers in general are uneducated and don’t have firm understanding of their rights or how to better their rights. The farm owners on the other hand have powerful lobbying machines to have influencing power in policy. On a much more micro level, individual farm owners can simply tell the migrant workers that the crop isn’t selling well (whether it’s true or not), so that they can pay the workers less. Another way that a migrant worker can be taken advantage of is through their crew leader. A crew leader acts as a middle man between the migrant workers and the farmers. For example, a farmer can be paying a dollar for a basket of cherries and the crew leader would take that dollar from the farmer and only give the person who picked those cherries 15 cents. The documentary also showed some of the poor living conditions the migrant workers had. They would either camp out near the farmland or live in disgustingly dirty work camps. Along with this, the migrant workers would be transported from farm to farm in even worse conditions that cattle have for transportation. For example, cows must be given a break every so often for water, while the migrant workers don’t typically stop until they reach the next farm or work camp. One last sad