About this Episode
On the heels of Black History Month, this episode recounts both the heroic and tragic circumstances of enslavement: not merely regarding self-determined liberation prior to 1865, but also incidents of debt enslavement that persisted in America’s Deep South well into the 1970s. If none of us are free until all of us are free, the invisible chains of our bondage linger still.
In this Episode
Dr. Antoinette Harrell
“Let’s talk about how sharecropping tied our ancestors to their former plantations…they owed a contract to the plantation owner and could never get out of debt. I spent 10 years in the Mississippi Delta studying families who were in that system. The worst cases of poverty that you can imagine in America for generations, and there was no way out.”
Dr. Nikki Taylor
“Even in the most crushingly oppressive moments, we’ve always been in a fight for freedom…from shackles, freedom to be able to choose your own destiny. But now, as we march forward into the second decade of the 21st century, freedom means other things like economic equity and justice from the oppression of mass incarceration.”
Deep Dive Resources
