Work in The South
Returning with his family to the South after the war, Aptheker became an educational worker for the Food and Tobacco Workers Union. Shortly afterward, he served as secretary of the "Abolish Peonage Committee." "Peons" in the South, the vast majority of whom were African American, were typically sharecroppers who became tied to plantations by the debt they owed to the plantation owners. This practice effectively maintained slavery beyond the Civil War in all but name.
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