Slavery didn’t end with the Emancipation Proclamation. The name just changed, and for many American Blacks, things got worse before they got better under freedom. Slavery By Another Name, based on a prize-winning book by the journalist Douglas A. Blackmon, is a compendium of abuses that augments that conventionally-accepted historical record of the economy of the American South after the Civil War.

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Slavery By Another Name reveals a dirty secret that has long been known in the historical community. Much of the South was built on forced Black labor after slavery was declared unconstitutional in 1863 and the South surrendered to end the Civil War in 1865. Blacks who were convicted of crimes, no matter how insignificant — vagrancy or the theft of a pig worth more than $1 – were often given long sentences and made available to mines, farms and factories.

Change was slow and begrudging. “If you had something for free in the past, you don’t necessarily want to pay for it now,” says one historian. The practice was brutal. About a third of prisoner mine workers in Alabama coal mines died every year.

Sam Pollard (with the help of a team of historians) shows how the South’s steel industry in Birmingham Alabama was built on prison labor, as were the coal and iron mines that supplied those mills. Some of those businesses were taken over by United States Steel, the nation’s largest firm at the time, which meant that Southerners were not the only beneficiaries. Imagine D. W. Griffith’s Birth Of A Nation, with corporate managers allied with the Ku Klux Klan.

Ohio House Minority Leader Armond Budish - a Democrat - says state regulations are not sufficient protection from the harmful affects of fracking. "I do agree with President Niehaus that developing our natural resources and protecting the environment are not mutually exclusive, however, I disagree that our regulations are sufficient. We have become, in Ohio, the dumping ground for contaminated brine for not only Ohio, but for Pennsylvania and I believe other states." he said. "The fact is we do not yet have sufficient knowledge as to the potential environmental hazards. We didn't adequately prepare for the potential for earthquakes and other environmental problems. We are seeing a rush to the fracking without adequate preparation on the environmental side. They are not mutually exclusive, but unfortunately in Ohio, the leadership has not adequately prepared yet for the environmental potential problems."

ALBANY —
...Brad Gill, executive director of the pro-fracking Independent Oil & Gas Association, said in a statement that Obama's message "must be heard and considered in New York as the state moves toward allowing safe natural gas development in the Southern Tier. ... We are confident that his vision will be reflected in the administration's actions, and that New York will recognize the role it will play in fulfilling the nation's energy goals."

"The President is right," said Jerry Kremer, chairman of the New York Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance. "New York must find a way to safely extract Marcellus Shale gas, as the resulting jobs and energy are vital to our state's future."

But Claire Sandberg, executive director of the advocacy group Frack Action, listened to that section of Obama's speech with "great dismay."

"His portrait doesn't stand up to the facts," she said, arguing that the drilling industry underplays environmental concerns and issues overblown projections of its economic impact.
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