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Book

Slavery after slavery : revealing the legacy of forced child apprenticeships on Black families, from emancipation to the present

Call Number

  • 306.362 B5346 (CEN, OSH, POW)

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Publication Information

Boston : Beacon Press, [2025]

Physical Description

x, 170 pages : illustrations, portraits; 24 cm

Summary

"An acclaimed historian narrates the stories of newly emancipated children who were re-enslaved by white masters through apprenticeships and their parents fights to free them. While the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, white southerners established a system of apprenticeship after the Civil War that entrapped Black children and their families, leading to undue hardships for generations to come. In Slavery After Slavery, historian Mary Frances Berry traces the stories behind individual cases from southern supreme courts to demonstrate how formerly enslaved families and their descendants were systemically injured through white supremacist practices, perpetuated by the legal system. By filling in the family trees of formerly enslaved people to their descendants, Berry documents the intergenerational harm they experienced. The resulting damage of trafficking Black children through apprenticeship laws has been a largely overlooked source of inequality, yet these cases provide specific examples of the kind of economic and physical harm Black families have endured. Slavery After Slavery tells individual stories, but the fates of their descendants tell our collective American story -- contributing powerfully to a case for reparations and restorative justice."--

Contents

  • Preface: Violet Maples's American dream
  • Introduction: Plumb lines
  • The lost children of Nathan and Jenney Cox
  • Freeing Henry Comas
  • The rescue of Mary Cannon
  • The emancipation of Eliza and Harriet Ambrose
  • Fighting for the sons of Samuel and Oliver Adams
  • The case of Sarah Lacy
  • Saving Simon Mitchell
  • The mysterious fate of the Comptons and Tillmans
  • Violet Maples and boss : the family feud that wasn't
  • The other Bridgeforths
  • Conclusion: Twisted trees.

Subjects