Documentary shows how slavery continued after the Civil War

'Slavery by Another Name'
"Slavery by Another Name" challenges one of our country's most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery ended with Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.
Courtesy of PBS/Douglas A. Blackmon

On PBS stations around the country viewers are getting a sobering history lesson. It's history you didn't learn in school.

We were taught that the enslavement of African-Americans ended with the Civil War. In reality, a new documentary, produced in part here in Minnesota, reveals that a new type of slavery began in the Deep South after the Civil War and persisted all the way through World War Two. "Slavery by Another Name" shows how tens of thousands of African-Americans were imprisoned on trumped-up charges and leased to the owners of factories, farms and mines as slave-laborers.

The documentary is based on a Pulitizer Prize winning book written by Douglas Blackmon. Minnesota Public Radio's Cathy Wurzer discussed the documentary with Blackmon and his co-executive producer Catherine Allan of Twin Cities Public Television.

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