So, I will say one last thing, and then I am done with this whole saga. I spend a lot of time with the Civil War. I do it through books and newspapers. Both require processing slavery constantly. As a fact of existence. I can wrap my head around it mostly by knowing that they’ll be free soon. 1/

But that’s the easy part. I read the stories of people stripped and whipped for not having free papers on them, or classifieds offering cash for runaways, and I can imagine that they survived. The fuckery is when you think about the millions that died in bondage. Not even a whiff of freedom. 2/

I think about Douglas Blackmon's book Slavery By Another Name, about convict leasing, where they would snatched black men off the street, charge them with vagrancy, and sell them to companies. Until the NINETEEN FORTIES. There are loads of people alive today who were alive then. History = now.