"The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again towards slavery." Written by W.E.B. Du Bois, This quote originally referred to three events that took place in the mid to late 1800s. The events were the end of the Civil War, wherein the slave population was freed, the brief period of “black reconstruction”, and finally the regression brought on by significant racial disparities such as a lack of political and economic representation. This quote is significant because it verbalized the regression of the African American population, and somewhat foreshadowed the massive spike in African American mass incarceration. In my opinion this is a very acceptable analogy for mass incarceration made by Michelle Alexander, in
