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Slavery After Slavery

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

Author Mary Frances Berry
Hardcover
$27.95 US
| $36.95 CAN
Beacon Press
On sale Jan 21, 2025 | 184 Pages | 9780807007839
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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.
“Basing her work on ten compelling court cases, Mary Frances Berry brings to life a horrific chapter of post–Civil War history that has been woefully overlooked: the virtual re-enslavement of Black children as forced laborers to enrich white adults through court-ordered apprenticeships. Slavery After Slavery is essential reading to understand—and contest—the racist structures that survived Emancipation and continue to deny Black people equal status and family autonomy in America today.”
—Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body, Shattered Bonds, and Torn Apart

“Slavery After Slavery tells an essential part of the story of slavery that must be told. It is a brilliant, truth-telling narrative that is groundbreaking, bracing, and enormously good—a work of importance.”
—Elijah Anderson, Sterling Professor, Yale University, and author of Black in White Space

“A heart-wrenching series of vignettes on white slaveholders acting to maintain ownership and control over the lives of Black children through the ‘apprenticeship’ mechanism under the Black Codes . . . At its core, Slavery After Slavery offers moving narratives of the lives destroyed and intergenerational damages wrought by the American failure to implement true Reconstruction.”
—William Darity Jr., coauthor of From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century
Dr. Mary Frances Berry is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the former chairwoman of the US Commission on Civil Rights, a Distinguished Fellow of the American Society for Legal History, the author of thirteen books, and the recipient of thirty-seven honorary degrees. Dr. Berry has appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher, The Daily Show, PBS NewsHour, CBS Evening News, Al Jazeera America News, and various MSNBC and CNN shows.
Mary Frances Berry View titles by Mary Frances Berry
PREFACE
Violet Maples’s American Dream

INTRODUCTION
Plumb Lines

CHAPTER 1
The Lost Children of Nathan and Jenney Cox

CHAPTER 2
Freeing Henry Comas

CHAPTER 3
The Rescue of Mary Cannon

CHAPTER 4
The Emancipation of Eliza and Harriet Ambrose

CHAPTER 5
Fighting for the Sons of Samuel and Oliver Adams

CHAPTER 6
The Case of Sarah Lacy

CHAPTER 7
Saving Simon Mitchell

CHAPTER 8
The Mysterious Fate of the Comptons and Tillmans

CHAPTER 9
Violet Maples and Boss: The Family Feud That Wasn’t

CHAPTER 10
The Other Bridgeforths

CONCLUSION
Twisted Trees

Appendix
Acknowledgments
Notes

About

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.

Reviews

“Basing her work on ten compelling court cases, Mary Frances Berry brings to life a horrific chapter of post–Civil War history that has been woefully overlooked: the virtual re-enslavement of Black children as forced laborers to enrich white adults through court-ordered apprenticeships. Slavery After Slavery is essential reading to understand—and contest—the racist structures that survived Emancipation and continue to deny Black people equal status and family autonomy in America today.”
—Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body, Shattered Bonds, and Torn Apart

“Slavery After Slavery tells an essential part of the story of slavery that must be told. It is a brilliant, truth-telling narrative that is groundbreaking, bracing, and enormously good—a work of importance.”
—Elijah Anderson, Sterling Professor, Yale University, and author of Black in White Space

“A heart-wrenching series of vignettes on white slaveholders acting to maintain ownership and control over the lives of Black children through the ‘apprenticeship’ mechanism under the Black Codes . . . At its core, Slavery After Slavery offers moving narratives of the lives destroyed and intergenerational damages wrought by the American failure to implement true Reconstruction.”
—William Darity Jr., coauthor of From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century

Author

Dr. Mary Frances Berry is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the former chairwoman of the US Commission on Civil Rights, a Distinguished Fellow of the American Society for Legal History, the author of thirteen books, and the recipient of thirty-seven honorary degrees. Dr. Berry has appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher, The Daily Show, PBS NewsHour, CBS Evening News, Al Jazeera America News, and various MSNBC and CNN shows.
Mary Frances Berry View titles by Mary Frances Berry

Table of Contents

PREFACE
Violet Maples’s American Dream

INTRODUCTION
Plumb Lines

CHAPTER 1
The Lost Children of Nathan and Jenney Cox

CHAPTER 2
Freeing Henry Comas

CHAPTER 3
The Rescue of Mary Cannon

CHAPTER 4
The Emancipation of Eliza and Harriet Ambrose

CHAPTER 5
Fighting for the Sons of Samuel and Oliver Adams

CHAPTER 6
The Case of Sarah Lacy

CHAPTER 7
Saving Simon Mitchell

CHAPTER 8
The Mysterious Fate of the Comptons and Tillmans

CHAPTER 9
Violet Maples and Boss: The Family Feud That Wasn’t

CHAPTER 10
The Other Bridgeforths

CONCLUSION
Twisted Trees

Appendix
Acknowledgments
Notes

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