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Race, Violence, and For-Profit Prison: A Conversation with Robin Bernstein
Today we speak with Harvard professor Robin Bernstein about her new book, Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder that Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit. While researching a book to develop her earlier interests in race and childhood, Bernstein came across the case of Afro-Indigenous teenager William Freeman, who in the late 19th century was convicted of stealing a horse and sentenced to five years in the federal prison in his home town, Auburn, New York. Forced to work for only nominal pay, beaten so much he lost the hearing in one ear, when released Freeman had the audacity to sue to…
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