Tag Archives: 13th Amendment

Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature, Part IV

Posted on February 16, 2026 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

I began writing this fourth and “final” installment of “Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature” on Martin Luther King Day. I re-read Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (16 April 1963), not for purposes of this series, but on this … Continue reading →

Posted in Justice Chronicles, Literature & Cultural Criticism, Streets of Rage | Tagged 13th, 13th Amendment, Alexis de Tocqueville, Ava DuVernay, Black Codes, Charles Hynes, Conviction Integrity Unit, Darryl Alston, De Profundis, Draft Riots of 1863, Equal Justice Initiative, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Growing Up, Gustave De Beaumont, Hillary Clinton, hyperincarceration, Johnson Crime Commission, Jonathan Fleming, Kenneth P. Thompson, Letter from Birmingham Jail, life sentences, Loic Wacquant, Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., Mass Incarceration, Michael G. Pass, Nuremberg, Oscar Wilde, Post-Reconstruction, prison industrial complex, raising black boys, Reconstruction, Red Summer, Richard Nixon, Rosewood massacre, Sara Mayeux, school-to-prison pipeline, Slavery, The House of the Dead, Tulsa Race Riot, urban decay, war on crime, War on Drugs | Leave a comment

The Pledge of Allegiance, Little White Lies, and All that Jazz!

Posted on March 7, 2023 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

It has been more than 50 years since I was in elementary school in the New York City public school system, yet I remember, word for word, the “Pledge of Allegiance.” At this time, I thought nothing of it, but … Continue reading →

Posted in Justice Chronicles, Politics & Public Affairs, Race, History & American Society, Streets of Rage | Tagged 13th Amendment, Atomic Bomb, Black Codes, Black Power, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Camelot, Confederate States of America, Critical Race Theory, Culture Wars, Great Society, Growing Up, Hiroshima, internment of Japanese Americans, James Brown, John F. Kennedy, Little White Lies, Lyndon B. Johnson, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Nagasaki, patriotism, Pledge of Allegiance, raising black boys, Richard Nixon, Robert F. Kennedy, Segregation, Slave Codes, Slavery, urban decay, war on crime, World War II | Leave a comment

The “new” Jim Crow is as old as the Union

Posted on March 7, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Ever have a “Eureka!” moment? During my legal research in the early 1980’s, I came across something that, beyond a reasonable doubt, confirmed what people had been talking about without much evidence, beyond the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics & Public Affairs, Race, History & American Society | Tagged 13th Amendment, Alexis de Tocqueville, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Brown v. Board of Education, Democracy in America, Emancipation Proclamation, Gustave De Beaumont, hyperincarceration, Martin Luther King Jr., Mass Incarceration, Michelle Alexander, On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application in France, Slave Codes, Slavery, The New Jim Crow | Leave a comment

Reconstruction Revisited

Posted on February 8, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

This book is, for the most part, unknown, even among history buffs, as I am. (I actually stumbled upon it more than 30 years ago. Someone had placed it among the trash!) This book though covers one of the most … Continue reading →

Posted in Race, History & American Society | Tagged 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, 15th Amendment, Hayes-Tilden Compromise, hyperincarceration, Reconstruction, Rutherford B. Hayes | Leave a comment

A Comparison of New York State Laws and Regulations and Slave Codes

Posted on July 18, 2020 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

In the mid-1980s, while doing research on an essay, which I would entitle, “From the Plantation to the Penitentiary,” I came across something startling. I had already seen the connection between slavery and imprisonment, from the very beginning of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Race, History & American Society | Tagged 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, 15th Amendment, Alabama Slave Code of 1852, Andrew Hacker, Bill Clinton, Black Codes, chain gangs, Civil War, Confederate memorials, Confederate Monuments, Confederate statues, Convict Leasing, Hayes-Tilden Compromise, law and order, Louisiana Slave Code of 1824, NY Correction Law Sec. 170, penal slavery, peonage, private prisons, race card, Reconstruction, Slave Codes, Slavery, South Carolina Slave Code of 1740, Two Nations: Black and White Separate Hostile Unequal | Leave a comment

On this Day in American history – June 19, 1865 — Juneteenth (From the Equal Justice Initiative)

Posted on June 19, 2020 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Although President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation declared enslaved Black people in Confederate territories free, these locations were under Confederate control, which rejected the freedom of enslaved people on plantations throughout the South. The Proclamation did little to emancipate enslaved … Continue reading →

Posted in Race, History & American Society | Tagged 13th Amendment, Black Patriotism, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Civil War, Confederacy, Emancipation Proclamation, Equal Justice Initiative, Juneteenth, Mass Incarceration, racial hierarchy, racial injustice, racial terror, racial terror lynchings, Reconstruction, Segregation, Slavery, white supremacy | Leave a comment

On this day in history, May 11, 1868 –Convict Leasing Begins in Georgia

Posted on May 11, 2018 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

After the Civil War, Georgia and other Southern states faced economic uncertainty. Dependent on enslaved black labor that was no longer available after emancipation and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, Southern economies struggled to find a new solution. For many, … Continue reading →

Posted in Criminal Justice & Punishment, Justice Chronicles | Tagged 13th Amendment, Black Codes, Civil War, Convict Leasing, Equal Justice Initiative, Georgia, Georgia & Alabama Railroad, Reconstruction, Slavery, Thomas Ruger | Leave a comment

A New Paradigm – Elevating the Voice of Formerly Incarcerated People

Posted on May 7, 2014 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

With the recent launch of JustLeadershipUSA, Glenn Martin, President and Founder of JustLeadershipUSA, is looking to elevate the voice of Americans impacted by crime and incarceration, especially people who have been imprisoned, by positioning them as “informed, empowered reform partners.” … Continue reading →

Posted in Advocacy, Research & Lived Expertise | Tagged 13th Amendment, Alex Haley, Alexis de Beaumont, All of Us or None, Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Blessed and Highly Favored: Memoirs of a Multiple Felon, But They All Come Back: Facing the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry, But They All Come Back: Rethinking Prisoner Reentry, Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions, Citizens Against Recidivism, criminal justice system, disenfranchisement, Elaine Bartlett, Era of Reentry, Exodus Transitional Community, felon disenfranchisement, formerly incarcerated people, franchise, Frederick Douglass, George Pataki, Glenn E. Martin, Great Society, Gustave de Tocqueville, Harvey Brown, incarceration, Jennifer Gonnerman, Jeremy Travis, Julio Medina, JustLeadershipUSA, leadership development, Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett, Lyndon B. Johnson, Malcolm X, mandatory minimum sentencing, Mass Incarceration, Michelle Alexander, New York, On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application in France, Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison, parole releasing policies, Piper Kerman, Richard Nixon, Rockefeller Drug Laws, slavery and imprisonment in the United States, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, The Ballot or the Bullet, the glass ceiling, the green wall, The Life of an Ex-Con, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Theo Harris, United States, United States Supreme Court, war on crime, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? | Leave a comment

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Tag Archives: 13th Amendment

Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature, Part IV

The Pledge of Allegiance, Little White Lies, and All that Jazz!

The “new” Jim Crow is as old as the Union

Reconstruction Revisited

A Comparison of New York State Laws and Regulations and Slave Codes

On this Day in American history – June 19, 1865 — Juneteenth (From the Equal Justice Initiative)

On this day in history, May 11, 1868 –Convict Leasing Begins in Georgia

A New Paradigm – Elevating the Voice of Formerly Incarcerated People

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