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Robin Bernstein, Freeman's Challenge

July 17, 2024, 7:00pm–8:00pm

History as seen through the eyes of preeminent authors.

Produced in partnership with New-York Historical Society

** Due to inclement weather, this event has been moved to an indoor location:

General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen of The City of New York
20 W 44th Street
New York, NY 10036

Robin Bernstein, Freeman's Challenge: The Murder That Shook America's Original Prison for Profit

Robin Bernstein is a cultural historian who specializes in the history of race and racism over the past two centuries. She teaches at Harvard, where she is the Dillon Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. She wrote Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder that Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Bernstein’s previous book, Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights, won five awards. She has also written a Jewish feminist children’s book, many prize-winning articles, and op-eds and essays in The New York TimesThe Chronicle of Higher Education, and other venues. She recently received the Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award.

2024 Season

July 10
Corey Brettschneider, The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It

July 17
Robin Bernstein, Freeman's Challenge: The Murder That Shook America's Original Prison for Profit

July 24
Dan Slater, The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld

July 31
Kevin Baker, The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City

August 7
Don Doyle, The Age of Reconstruction: How Lincoln's New Birth of Freedom Remade the World

August 14
David Daley, Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right's 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections

August 21
Paul M. Sparrow, Awakening the Spirit of America: FDR's War of Words with Charles Lindberg- and the Battle to Save Democracy

August 28
The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots: A True Story of Slavery; A Rediscovered Narrative, with a Full Biography by John Swanson Jacobs
Hosted by Jonathan D.S. Schroeder, Editor

September 4
William Hogeland, The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding

September 11
John Reeves, Soldier of Destiny: Slavery, Secession, and the Redemption of Ulysses S. Grant

See more upcoming Non-Fiction events