Slavery By Another Name

Story by Michelle Alimoradi

On Monday, February 13th, PBS stations will air a 90 minute documentary called “Slavery By Another Name”, based on a book by journalist Douglas Blackmon. The book is built around the story of a man named Green Cottenham, who, as an African American in the early part of the 20th century, was arrested for being unemployed and black, and literally sold by the government to an American corporation to work in a mine.
Cottenham, and thousands like him, had their freedom taken away and were brutalized as part of a systematic re-creation of slavery decades after the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War.
The public TV program on this topic was produced by Twin Cities Public Television with Catherine Allen as executive producer. Allen and the author the Pulitzer Prize winning book that inspired the documentary, Douglas Blackmon, talked with KFAI's Michelle Alimoradi.