“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

“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 presents 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. The book documents cases of fierce resistance of black parents to the theft of their children and the circumstances when they experienced success or failure in maintaining their families. 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