Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America

Ira Berlin is a professor of history at the University of Maryland and winner of the 1999 Bancroft Prize in American History. His talk draws upon Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America in tandem with Remembering Slavery: African-Americans Talk about Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation. He shows how "the slaves’ history—like all human history—was made not only by what was done to them but also by what they did for themselves," offering a double perspective and a sense of balance to the often cacophonous debate about the mainein of slavery in the American experience.