An Oration Delivered Before The Central Medical Society Of Georgia

Author : Daina Ramey Berry
Publisher : Beacon Press
ISBN 13 : 0807047635
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (7 download)

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Download or read book The Price for Their Pound of Flesh written by Daina Ramey Berry and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “must-read for anyone interested in understanding American history” reframes how we think about slavery, reparations, 19th-century medical education—and the value of life and death (Sven Beckert, author of Empire of Cotton). “A brilliant resurrection of the forgotten people who gave their lives to build our country.” —Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents 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 10 years of Berry’s exhaustive research on enslaved values, drawing on data unearthed from sources such as slave-trading records, insurance policies, cemetery records, and life insurance policies. Writing with sensitivity and depth, she resurrects the voices of the enslaved and provides a rare window into enslaved peoples’ experiences and thoughts, revealing how enslaved people recalled and responded to being appraised, bartered, and sold throughout the course of their lives. A profoundly humane look at an inhumane institution, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh will have a major impact how we think about slavery, reparations, capitalism, 19th-century medical education, and the value of life and death.