Slavery in New York

Edited by Ira Berlin and Leslie M. Harris

Published in conjunction with the New-York Historical Society

paperback

$25.00 / £14.99

The recent discovery of the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan reminded Americans that slavery in the United States was not merely a phenomenon of the antebellum South. In fact, for most of its history New York was a slave city.

Edited by Ira Berlin, the Bancroft Prize–winning author of Many Thousands Gone, and Leslie Harris, Slavery in New York brings together twelve new contributions by leading historians of slavery and African American life in New York. Published to accompany a major exhibit at the New-York Historical Society, the book demonstrates how slavery shaped the day-to-day experience of New Yorkers, black and white, and how, as a way of doing business, it propelled New York to become the commercial and financial power it is today.

Powerfully illustrated with images from the New-York Historical Society exhibit, Slavery and the Making of New York will be the definitive account of New York’s slave past.

Ira Berlin is the author of Generations of Captivity, Many Thousands Gone (winner of the Bancroft Prize), Remembering Slavery, and Slaves Without Masters. He is a professor of U.S. and African American history at the University of Maryland. Leslie Harris is a professor of history at Emory University and is the author of In the Shadow of Slavery.