WEBVTT

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- Sharecropping is not slavery,

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but it did become,

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for an enormous
population of people,

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forced labor.

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And I think that
splitting hairs about

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what's slavery,

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what's involuntary servitude,

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what's forced labor is
a distracting exercise.

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The reality is millions

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of black people in remote parts

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of the South could not leave

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the farms they
were being held on.

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If they did,

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they were subject to
arrest by the sheriff.

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And if they were arrested,

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they would then be returned

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to the very same
farms oftentimes

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in chains receiving nothing,

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that is slavery.

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That's a form of slavery.

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But the criminal justice system

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and the use of the courts

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to force African-Americans back

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into labor was only one element

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of the new kind of slavery

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that soon pervaded the South.

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Sharecropping began,

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for instance,

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as a form of free labor

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in which a farmer would go
to work would would work

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a portion of the land owned

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by another man in return
for a share of the crop.

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But the laws that
were being passed

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by the South and the threat

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of being arrested
and forced into

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a much more terrible kind of,

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of a penalty,

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in a coal mine,

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or are on a prison
farm somewhere.

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The threat of having that happen

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to any African-American
man meant

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that he could not
defy the wishes

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of the white land owner

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where he was working.

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Again and again,

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for millions of
African-Americans
working as sharecroppers,

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they and their families
were as effectively held

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and immobilized on those farms

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in the 1890s and into the 1900s

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as their grandparents
had been held

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as slaves in the same
places before the Civil War.

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Almost all sharecroppers
were never able

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to pay back the debts

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to the landowners on
whose land they worked.

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They effectively were peons,

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even though they were not
called that at the time.