Reckoning with Enslavement

Abstract

For over seventy years, the enslaved families of Prince George's County, Maryland, filed hundreds of suits for their freedom against a powerful circle of slaveholders, taking their cause all the way to the Supreme Court. In this excerpt from A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation’s Founding to the Civil War (Yale University Press, 2020), William G. Thomas introduces a major theme of his book: the nation's present-day need to confront the legacy of slavery and to reckon with "real histories, with real families whose descendants live among us." Excerpted from the prologue with permission from Yale University Press.