JAYFORCE

It’s one thing for post Civil War slaves to be freed on paper, to actually BE freed from slavery is a whole thing altogether. Consider the ‘lag time’ between that Emancipation Proclamation and the slaves coming to know that they can stop ‘slaving’ for no wages… that they can stop being mistreated, brutalized and/or otherwise denied basic human rights & dignity. Especially with no formal education, exposure to ‘outsiders’ (not even mass media or Internet). Think ‘Massuh’ went to them slaves right away to tell ’em, “Y’alls free now”? Hell no. But just how long were they still enslaved? VICE goes to ‘The Slavery Detective of the South’ to get her to tell the whole story.

Slavery might have ended on paper after the Civil War, but many White landowners did everything they could to exploit newly freed slaves well into the 20th century. Thousands of Black laborers across the South were forced to work against their will as late as the 1960s—a new form of enslavement that went on in the shadows of rural America.

VICE’s Akil Gibbons traveled to Louisiana to meet genealogist Antoinette Harrell, the “slavery detective of the South,” who tracks down cases of modern-day slavery and abusive labor practices. They talk to a man whose family was held on a plantation against their will into the 1950s, and explains how she uses decades-old records to uncover how slavery was perpetuated long after the Civil War ended.

– VICE

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