Did the Civil War Really Bring an End to Slavery?

We are often taught that Abraham Lincoln ended slavery at the culmination of the Civil War; accordingly, very few realize that institutions just as cruel and malignant as slavery existed far after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1865. Prior to watching the Parchman Documentary in class on Friday, I was fully aware that certain practices intended to suppress blacks (e.g. Jim Crow Laws) still existed decades after 1865. I was not aware, however, just how inhumane and similar to slavery many of these practices were. Essentially, all throughout the South, in order to maintain the free labor and high crop yields achieved by slavery, whites exploited the criminal justice system by sentencing blacks to years in prison for minor crimes like theft; or, even worse, law officials would frame blacks for crimes that they entirely did not commit. Upon being framed and/or given an outrageously lengthy sentence, blacks were sent to a prison and were forced to work brutally long, labor intensive hours in the stifling heat of the South. One of the largest such prisons was the Mississippi State Penitentiary, otherwise known as Parchman Farm. In Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward does a marvelous job of bringing to life the inhumane conditions of Parchman: children as young as 12 being worked to near death, prisoners at the constant threat of armed guards, and regular beatings of inmates. It's sad to think that this practice lasted well into the late 20th century-- as far as 100 years after the end of the Civil War, prisons in the South were still getting away with slavery.