Slavery After Slavery: Revealing the Legacy of Forced Child Apprenticeships on Black Families, from Emancipation to the Present

In this eye-opening and disturbing account, historian Berry (History Teaches Us to Resist) reveals that Black children were routinely “trafficked” by white Southerners via so-called apprenticeships following the Civil War. Through archival sleuthing, she uncovers a pattern of court cases in which Black parents tried to retrieve children stolen by wealthy whites, like the Alabama couple Nathan and Jenney Cox, who in 1865 lost five of their children—ages ranging from three to 16—to Francis Jones, their former enslaver. Jones—whom Berry characterizes as wanting “to keep his unpaid laborers as long as possible”—had applied to a court to indenture the children on the grounds that their parents could not support them, and that by granting his application the county would be spared the cost of their upkeep. The judge, a former Confederate officer, ruled in his favor, rejecting Nathan and Jenney’s protests that they were able to provide for their family. Other chapters recount similarly harrowing episodes that highlight additional cudgels used by the courts to traffic Black children, like how marriages that Black people had entered into during slavery were not considered legal, making their children legally orphans. Tracing the impact such forced separations had on later generations of these same families, Berry makes a forceful case for reparations. The result is a persuasive look at how the material harms of racism are still quantifiable today. (Jan.)