Dr. Deborah Plant is an independent scholar of African American Literature and Africana Studies and a former Africana and English professor at the University of South Florida. She is an expert on the life and works of Zora Neale Hurston and edited Barracoon, Hurston’s posthumously published account of the last survivor of the transatlantic slave trade. She is not, however, a historian.
Yet Plant’s latest book, Of Greed and Glory: In Pursuit of Freedom of All is in large part a work of historical nonfiction. In it, she explores how the wording of the 13th Amendment set the stage for the incarceration of millions of African Americans, who in turn provided unpaid labor that enriched their captors. Intended to prohibit slavery, the 13th Amendment exempts “the duly convicted” from its protections, that is, those who have been convicted of a crime. Plant establishes a direct line from this loophole through the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws to today’s mass incarceration, which disproportionately imprisons Black people. In other words, far from prohibiting slavery, the 13th Amendment enabled it to continue under the color of law.
While Of Greed and Glory is grounded in historical fact, it is not a history. Instead, it is a deeply subjective book, drenched with the sorrow and rage Plant feels about her brother’s unjust lifetime sentence for rape he did not commit. Most historians avoid subjectivity, but here, subjectivity is the point. The inhumanity and degradation resulting from the exploitation of the “duly convicted” clause results in the objectification of wide swaths of the population. By sharing her brother’s experience, Plant asserts that he and others like him have the right to be the autonomous sovereigns of their own lives, and not the anonymous targets of an unjust system.
This is an emotional and passionate book, raw in its grief and anger, but also imbued with hope for redemption. Based on objective historical fact and subjective experience, Of Greed and Glory has the power of a sermon and the urgency of a manifesto.
