Freeman's Challenge: Unveiling the Origins of Prison for Profit with Dr. Robin Bernstein

The United States has a very complex, oft-oversimplified past. Dr. Robin Bernstein—a Dillon Professor of American History and Professor of African and African-American Studies and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University—unravels a bit of that past in her new book Freeman’s Challenge, a gripping story of murder, greed and race about a young man sentenced to five years of hard labor at Auburn prison in the early 19th century. In the 19th century, as slavery gradually ended in the North, a village in New York State concocted a new form of unfreedom—the profit-driven prison, uniting incarceration and capitalism. Here, the village of Auburn built a prison that enclosed industrial factories, where “slaves of the state” were leased to private companies. The book’s protagonist, an Afro-Native teenager named William Freeman, is convicted of horse theft and insists on his innocence. After demanding fair wages, a series of events leads to violence and social aftershocks that reverberate still in our society today. Find out more on Books That Make You. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram.