American history textbooks state that the enslavement of Africans and people of African descent ended in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation. However, as genealogist social science researcher Antoinette Harrell demonstrated through a showing of her film

“The Untold Story: Slavery in the Twentieth Century,” slavery, also called peonage, is still alive today in at least 10 states including Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Florida, and Missouri. The Southeastern Sociological Association sponsored the showing.

“I met people who had no idea slavery had been abolished, right here in the 20th century,” said Harrell. “The film tells the story of Mae Louise Miller. She was a woman that I had met that wanted to share her story.”

The film heavily used interviews with Miller, who had fled from a Mississippi plantation with her family in 1963. When Harrell told this to the audience, she stressed 1963, not 1863. According to Dr. Rebecca Hensley, instructor of sociology, who had met Miller once before as well as people in Miller’s who were subject to constant inhumane treatment.

“They got their water from a sludge filled stagnant pond. Their food was the scraps from their owner’s table thrown into a trough,” said Hensley. “Mae had never worn shoes before she was 20. Before she fled the plantation in 1963, she had been raped so many times, she is now unable to have children.”

The 30-minute film was primarily shot in Mississippi courthouses, homes and fields. The content of the film included interviews and the showing of documents, including excerpts from the Emancipation Proclamation and American peonage laws. According to Harrell, the main focus of the film was to present how legal peonage began and the obvious horror of this massive violation of human rights.

The film states that modern slavery began after the Civil War. With slavery abolished, thousands of blacks had nowhere to go. To counteract the problem, a contract called the Freedman act contract between former slaves and plantation owners was created. This contract allowed the freed slaves to farm the plantation owner’s land in exchange for a share of their crop. However, the contract was legally binding, meaning that the sharecroppers could not leave their patron’s land until a certain amount of crop was given to the owner. Men and women with families, both black and white, became indentured servants to plantation owners under this contract.

Mae Louise Miller belonged to such a family. In an interview on camera, she detailed how her father had attempted to escape from their employers land sometime in the late 1950s. Her father had escaped, leaving his wife and children behind because he could no longer take the abuse. He ran to a neighboring house, whose residents offered to take him to safety. Instead they brought him back to the plantation, where he was beaten almost to death.

According to Miller, this is allowed in remote communities because people in power are behind it.

“People like me are scared to talk,” Miller stated. “Slaves are afraid to talk because the sheriff, lawyers and constables are all in on this.”

Harrell then detailed how these indentured servants are acquired.

“The constable would arrest people, black and white, on trumped up charges,” said Harrell. “He would then slap them with a fine so high they couldn’t afford it. They would call their friends in business who would pay the bail, binding the defendant to them.”

Harrell added that these people would work in cotton fields and lumber yards until their debts were paid. However, most would work 10 hours a day and receive only $2.

Despite the sparse audience of only six students, each individual was affected. Vicky Roberts, a sophomore social work major, was on the edge of tears by the end of the presentation.

“It’s so surreal,” said Roberts. “When you see something horrible like that, you think it’s in a movie, but I know it’s not.”

Patience January, a senior criminal justice major, was also upset.

“It was painful to watch,” said January. “As an African American, it is very upsetting. I knew that this was going on, but not to this extent.”

Harrell answered a few questions and closed her presentation with encouraging remarks.

“These people are suffering,” said Harrell. “We must continue to educate, and we must continue to blog. For generations this has recycled itself, and it must stop.”