This Post Modern Reconstruction Era

If you have not seen it you MUST watch the PBS special, SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME. As I watched this incredibly informative program about life after the Emancipation Proclamation I saw saw frightening similarities between then and now.

To briefly recap, after Lincoln's assassination the new President (Johnson) was allied with southern interests. Being an economy based on free labor run by a small number of aristocrats (sound familiar?) and with a majority of poor whites who were also uneducated and poverty stricken, free Black people were feared as competitors for work aka survival.

In 1864 slavery was outlawed by The 13th Amendment was issued as a temporary act which read, "Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

In 1868 to further ensure equality the 14th Amendment was passed stating (Section 1)
that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

In 1870 the 15th Amendment was passed stating the prime objective in Section 1 as being, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Basically what happened thereafter was a backlash in the south that resulted in the placement of congressional leaders that passed laws EMPOWERING INDIVIDUAL STATES to govern according to their own laws (Sound familiar?) The result, as brilliantly illustrated in this documentary, was laws that made (for example) loitering being defined as being unemployed with loitering being a crime punishable by imprisonment. Of course there were other laws such as the Pig Laws that made stealing a pig punishable by eight years in prison! the south then found a way to get back cheap labor by sentencing man, many more Black men than white men so they could be hired out to hard labor for the newly growing Industrial Economy.

With the push for States' Rights being bandied about in a frighteningly serious manner and with ignorance not only being catered to but lauded as a virtue can we not see where this is going?

Fast forward to our present. The elite one per cent is doing the very same thing to circumvent rights such as federal laws to which states must comply. States' Rights, if put in place could over ride federal law and cancel the Civil rights Acts, Women's Voting rights and even freedom of religion! this sounds far fetched some may say but, is it really?

With misinformation being bandied about that many people are not minimally educated enough to know States' Rights might appeal to a particular religious or philosophical point of view.

Now consider this: Have the ninety-nine per cent, over time, becomes slaves by another name?