This is not an Unusual situation either. David Upton (I believe) a while back produced court records of where some free blacks in the south prior to the War petitioned the courts to be made the slave of so and so because they couldn't support themselves outside the plantation. And you say well that wouldn't happen today. And I will say that it does in fact happen. I have seen long time convicts who once paroled within a month committed a crime to violate their probation so they would be sent back to prison and the life that they had grown accustom to.
One of the sad points during the war is the misery of the "free" contribands in the camps. Once off the plantation they did not know what to do and as a results greater percentage of negros died in Union Contriband camps along the lower Mississippi Valley, per 1,000 population, than Union Soldiers that died at Andersonville, or any other Confederate Prisoner of War camp. Yeah the Negros were "free", but no one cared about them, or for them if they had no value to somebody. And no one cared anything about them for 100 years once the black republicans lost their political need of them to keep that party in power, because they were just as free to find one of those fine jobs in the reconstruction south as anyone else.
The even sadder point is that as that old slave siad in his narrative that started this post the negro has again sold his soul and are depending upon the handouts and political promices of one political party to advance themselves in a new "Reconstruction" of the South. And with our New President we have just about ran the course to it conclusion again.
Life and History travels in a circle. We keep repeating ourselves because we fail to learn the real lessons and cling to dead retoric, promices and platitudes.