Calvin Schermerhorn is a historian of slavery, capitalism, and African American inequality, Professor of History at Arizona State University, and will be a Fulbright Senior Scholar to the U.K. in 2021. His books include _Unrequited Toil: A History of United States Slavery_ (Cambridge, 2018); _The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860_(Yale, 2015), and _Money over Mastery, Family over Freedom: Slavery in the Antebellum Upper South_(Johns Hopkins, 2011).
On June 19, 1865 – 155 years ago – Black Americans celebrating the day of Jubilee, later known as Juneteenth, may have expected a shot at real opportunity. Freedom from slavery should have been freedom to climb up the economic ladder, helped – or at least not hindered – by a nation newly rededicated to […]
