Douglas Blackmon, the author of Slavery by Another Name, will share his book and speak with us about neo-slavery, race, poverty, and politics. It will be great night with good food and great company!

Slavery by Another Name uses a vast record of original documents and personal narratives to unearth the lost stories of slaves and their descendants, who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude.

It also reveals the stories of those who fought unsuccessfully against the re-emergence of human labor trafficking, the modern companies that profited most from neo-slavery, and the system’s final demise in the 1940s, partly due to fears of enemy propaganda about American racial abuse at the beginning of World War II.

This event is co-hosted by Bridging the Racial Wealth Divide.

About Douglas Blackmon:

Over the past 20 years, Douglas A. Blackmon has written extensively about the American quandary of race, exploring the integration of schools during his childhood in a Mississippi Delta farm town, lost episodes of the civil rights movement and, repeatedly, the dilemma of how a contemporary society should grapple with a troubled past. Many of his stories in The Wall Street Journal have explored the interplay of wealth, corporate conduct and racial segregation.

In 2000, the National Association of Black Journalists recognized Blackmon’s stories revealing the secret role of J.P. Morgan & Co. during the 1960s in funneling funds between a wealthy northern white supremacist and segregationists fighting the Civil Rights Movement in the South. A year later, he revealed in the Journal how U.S. Steel Corp. relied on forced black laborers in Alabama coal mines in the early 20th century, an article which led to his first book, Slavery By Another Name, which broadly examines how a form of neoslavery thrived in the U.S. long after legal abolition.

Blackmon’s stories or the work of his team have been widely acclaimed, including for coverage of the subprime meltdown, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Florida hurricanes in 2004 and for his 2001 examination of slave labor in the 20th century. His article on U.S. Steel was included in the 2003 edition of Best Business Stories. The Journal’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina received a special National Headliner award in 2006.

Blackmon joined the Wall Street Journal in October 1995 as a reporter in Atlanta. Prior to joining the Journal, Blackmon was a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he covered race and politics, and special assignments including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. Previously, he was a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat, managing editor of the Daily Record in Little Rock, Ark, and a writer for weekly newspapers.

Blackmon penned his first newspaper story at the age of 12, for the Progress, in his hometown of Leland, Mississippi. He graduated from Hendrix College in Conway, Ark., and lives in Atlanta with his wife and two children.