On Sunday, March 23, the Modjeska Simkins School will host a program to explore the intersection of Black history, slavery, and American capitalism with national expert University of Virginia professor Dr. Justene Hill Edwards.
The program is free and open to the public. Participants may join on Zoom or in-person at GROW in Columbia.
Dr. Hill Edwards’ latest book, Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank, examines the relationship between democracy and capitalism during the Reconstruction era. The Freedman’s Bank served tens of thousands of recently emancipated African Americans, many of them making deposits in the Freedman’s banks in Charleston and Beaufort.
Why and how did it fail, and what are the lessons it can teach us today?
Recent research on racial and economic inequality in the United States has led to policy discussions that have placed blame on issues such as access to affordable credit and redlining. Hill Edwards argues that we cannot fully understand why economic inequality persists by looking to modern American history for answers.
Hill Edwards’ books — Unfree Markets: The Slaves’ Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina (2021) and Savings and Trust (2024) consider the role of the federal government and America’s banking industry in furthering economic inequality at the end of slavery in 1865. The books show that the vestiges of race-based economic inequality are not in the late-nineteenth or twentieth centuries, but in the period of legal slavery.
Sunday’s program is part of the Modjeska School’s Deeper Dive series, which is a supplement for the students, who are currently studying the antebellum era, Civil War, and Reconstruction.
“We are pleased to be able to bring Dr. Hill Edwards back to the school this session,” said Network Executive Director Brett Bursey. “Her research helps reveal how our state’s minimally adequate education — and the escalating legislative assault on teaching truth — continue to serve the interest of the monied gentry.”
The program will be held 4-6pm on Zoom and in-person at the SC Progressive’s HQ at 1340 Elmwood Ave. in Columbia. To join online, register HERE.