From Preconception to Postmortem: Understanding the Value of Black Life During Slavery

In life and in death, slaves were commodities, their monetary value assigned based on their age, gender, health, and the demands of the market. This session will 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.