Where:
Boston Athenaeum
10 1/2 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02108
Admission:
$20
Categories:
Art, Good for Groups, History, Lectures & Conferences
Event website:
https://events.bostonathenaeum.org/en-US/4W52KhR7/author-talk-or-robin-bernstein-freemans-challenge-5a2KUm3y3sX/overview
Cultural historian Robin Bernstein speaks with Dr. Lisa L. Biggs, Assistant Professor of the Arts and Africana Studies at Brown University, about Bernstein’s new book, Freeman’s Challenge.
In Freeman’s Challenge, Robin Bernstein tells the story of an Afro-Native teenager named William Freeman who was convicted of a horse theft he insisted he did not commit and sentenced to five years of hard labor in Auburn’s prison. Incensed at being forced to work without pay, Freeman demanded wages. His challenge triggered violence: first against him, then by him. Freeman committed a murder that terrified and bewildered white America. And white America struck back—with aftereffects that reverberate into our lives today in the persistent myth of inherent Black criminality. William Freeman’s unforgettable story reveals how the North invented prison for profit half a century before the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery “except as a punishment for crime”—and how Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and other African Americans invented strategies of resilience and resistance in a city dominated by a citadel of unfreedom.
Through one Black man, his family, and his city, Bernstein tells an explosive, moving story about the entangled origins of prison for profit and anti-Black racism.
Saturday, Apr 05, 2025 12:00p
Trillium Flagship
Friday, Apr 04, 2025 5:00p
Crystal Ballroom at Somerville Theatre
Monday, May 05, 2025 goes until 05/18
Boston Area Spanish Exchange (BASE)