The Price for Their Pound of Flesh

The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave in the Building of a Nation

Author: Daina Ramey Berry
ISBN: 9780807047620

Groundbreaking look at slaves as commodities through every phase of life, from birth to death and beyond, in early America In life and in death, slaves were commodities, their monetary value assigned based on their age, gender, health, and the demands of the market. The Price for Their Pound of Flesh is the first book to explore the economic value of enslaved people through every phase of their lives--including preconception, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, the senior years, and death--in the early American domestic slave trade. Covering the full "life cycle," historian Daina Ramey Berry shows the lengths to which enslavers would go to maximize profits and protect their investments. Illuminating "ghost values" or the prices placed on dead enslaved people, Berry explores the little-known domestic cadaver trade and traces the illicit sales of dead bodies to medical schools. This book is the culmination of more than ten years of Berry's exhaustive research on enslaved values

Publisher: Beacon Press
Publish Date: 2017

Subjects: Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies, Social Science / Slavery

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Black Resource Center (Location: 1B)