Abolition By Degrees

The Civil War killed slavery as an institution, but not as an occasional form of criminal behavior. The U.S. Department of Justice from time to time finds violators of the anti-peonage act of 1867; since mid-1950 it has successfully prosecuted ten. Last week Federal Judge Seybourn H. Lynne in Birmingham sentenced Farmers Oscar and Fred Dial to 18 months in prison for holding Negroes in involuntary servitude.

The Dial brothers got their slaves from jails. They paid the Negroes' fines, drove them home to work on the Dial farms near Boyd, Ala., and kept them there by force. Fred Dial beat one with a lariat, and soon afterward the man died of pneumonia. When the slave's mother got possession of his body, she saw the cuts and bruises on it and asked her white employer for help. He told authorities, and the FBI moved in.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.