Introduction to American History and Race

Bruce Anthony: We are talking my favorite subject, American History, specifically the history of race and incarceration. We gonna get into it. Let's get it

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Bruce Anthony: welcome. First of all, welcome. This is Unsolicited Perspectives. I'm your host, Bruce Anthony. Here to lead the conversation in important events and topics that are shaping today's society. Join the conversation or follow us wherever you get your audio podcast. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for our video podcast, YouTube exclusive content, and our YouTube membership rate review.

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Meet Dr. Robin Bernstein

Bruce Anthony: my guest is Dr. Ruben Bernstein, Harvard professor, cultural historian, author of Freeman's Challenge, the Murder That Shook America's Original Prison for Profit. We're diving into how the 19th century [00:01:00] blueprint for mass incarceration was born long before the 1980s and what that means for America right now.

But that's enough of the intro. Let's get to the show.

Bruce Anthony: My guest today is Dr. Robin Bernstein, the Dylan Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She's one of the leading voices examining how race has been constructed in America from the 19th century to today. Her book, Freeman's Challenge, the Murder that Shook America's Original Prison for Profit, explores the story of William Freeman, a young black man.

Whose tragic encounter with the first prison for profit in Auburn, New York, exposed to economic machinery that turned incarceration into industry? Bernstein's work reframes what we think we know about the origins of mass incarceration, showing that the system wasn't born in the modern era, but rooted in early capitalism.

Racial hierarchy and [00:02:00] the violent genius of those who realize crime could be monetized. We're gonna talk about the history behind the system, the moral gymnastic we still perform to justify and the fight for justice that continues today. So without further ado, here's Dr. Robin Bernstein.

Dr. Bernstein's Background and Inspiration

Bruce Anthony: As I said at the top, I'm here with Dr. Robin Bernstein. Dr. Robin also, ladies and gentlemen, I just found this out before we jumped on and started recording. Dr. Robin also went to the University of Maryland. This is not some scheme for my audience to send their children to the University of Maryland, but wouldn't hurt Dr.

Robin. Thank you for joining the show. We're about to have a very important conversation that I know my audience will definitely learn from, and I'm looking forward to it.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Thank you so much for having me.

Bruce Anthony: Oh, it's, it's absolutely my pleasure and I always like starting off the interviews with, let's go back in time. So you've built your career studying how race has been [00:03:00] constructed in the US over centuries. you take us back to your own background? What first sparked your interest in history and what led you specifically into exploring race, performance, incarceration?

Early Influences and Roots

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Yeah, well, I'll start with the history question. So I think I was always just kind of interested in history, but I do remember there was one influence when I was a little girl. I read this really interesting book about the search for the Hanth. So the Hanth is a fish and it's a fish that everybody thought was extinct.

And then and it was, it was a small fish and then this huge fish. WA got caught somehow. It was giant. It was like six feet long, and it looked exactly like the seal can, except that it was so much bigger and the sealant was supposedly extinct. So this set off a great big search to find a living sealant [00:04:00] that had ized basically.

And it was a very exciting book for a kid. But the part of it that really blew my mind was when the scientists finally found a living seal can, they found it off the coast of an island, off the coast of Africa. And when they finally found a living seal can, of course the people who lived on this island totally knew about the fish.

And what they said to the sien, it wasn't lost at all. And what they said to the scientists was that the fish didn't taste very good, but. Its scales were useful for scraping bicycle tires. And I probably read this when I was about 10 years old, and it just blew my mind. What, and a number of things about it blew my mind.

One was that. Things that we thought were true might not be true. That like this, this, this fish [00:05:00] was supposedly extinct. It wasn't extinct, but also that the knowledge we're looking for somebody already has it. And it is somebody, in this case, it was a group of, of people who were not defined as scientists.

So these quote unquote scientists came in and they were searching and searching for this knowledge, and it turned out ordinary people already had it. And part of what I really loved was the fact that they said. It was good for scraping bicycle tires that these were not people who were somehow outside of the modern world.

These were people who had bicycles. They were in the modern world. I had a bicycle, I was 10, you know, and they were, they were like me in that they knew bicycles. And so this just really started me thinking about the recovery of history. That things that we think are gone are not necessarily gone. And actually very ordinary people like me might have the key to something amazing.

So that was, that was really when it first [00:06:00] started. When I first started thinking about history and, and knowledge. But where I got interested in African American studies, again, this is a child's story. I got interested in it really honestly.

The Impact of Roots and Understanding Slavery

Dr. Robin Bernstein: In first grade, something that happened to me that happened to a lot of people was roots was broadcast on television and I was in the first grade and my parents framed it in a really interesting way that I think was really smart.

So my parents wanted me and my brother to watch Roots. Now we are a white Jewish family, and they were very clear that this was not our family history. This was not our racial history, but the way they framed it, this was American history, that all of it, all of roots, the stories of the black characters and roots, the stories of the white characters and roots, the stories of [00:07:00] evil, the stories of violence, the stories of resistance and triumph, all of it, the whole thing of it.

Was American history and I needed to watch it because I was an American and I needed to, to know that this was informing my life, all of it, all of its complexity. So I watched it. I was a first grader, I watched it and it upset me terribly. The thing that upset me most about it was that, you know, really honestly, this is how I learned what slavery was.

I was probably eight. And what upset me so much about it was the idea of slavery itself. The idea that a person could be owned or a person could own another person. And part of what upset me about that so much was that I could not comprehend it. It just made no sense to me. And no matter how much I turned it over and over in my head, I just [00:08:00] could not make it.

Makes sense. It. It just made no sense. And now of course as an adult who has spent 40 years studying slavery, I understand that the reason it made no sense was that slavery makes no sense, that in fact it is not possible for a human to be owned or to own another human. It makes no sense. And what bothered me so much and upset me so much as an 8-year-old is what still bothers me about it, the lie of it, the epistemological violence of it.

So that's my answer to how I got interested in history and in particular African American history.

Bruce Anthony: I have two follow-up questions. One is, well, they're both pretty personal, so don't have to answer 'em if you don't want to, but I'm curious.

Family History and Progressive Upbringing

Bruce Anthony: Seems like your parents were pretty progressive now. You come from a Jewish background and [00:09:00] Roots was in the seventies. Were your parents connected or did your parents have any family members that were connected or had been a part of the Holocaust?

Dr. Robin Bernstein: In a direct line? No. All four of my grandparents were born in the United States and they were all four of my grandparents were born before the Holocaust. Okay. Extended family, of course. I mean there, there's, I don't think there's a Jewish family on the planet that doesn't have extended family that died in the Holocaust.

Bruce Anthony: Is it because of that? Because I studying history, I see so many Jewish people. One of the, one of the college kids that was killed in Mississippi was Jewish. There's a connection of the Jewish community, specifically in the fifties, sixties and seventies that are fighting for civil rights. And I've always said, well, 'cause they see the connection here of slavery Jim Crow segregation. And then what happened there? Were your [00:10:00] parents just progressive or was it they saw because of history? This is something that you also need to learn?

Dr. Robin Bernstein: That's a great question. Nobody's asked me that question before. My parents, and thank God they're both still alive, so I'll talk about them in the present tense even though we're talking about the seventies. My parents are just generally progressive people. They are generally anti-racist people.

I think their own their own politics came into consciousness through the Vietnam War. My parents were both strongly opposed to the Vietnam War. They marched against the war in Vietnam. They were so I think if, if they were here, I think that's how they would answer this question. I think they also I think they cared about racial justice and still care about racial justice among a constellation of issues.

[00:11:00] But I think what really brought them into a political world for them personally was the Vietnam War.

Bruce Anthony: Okay. And the second. Part of the question. And I'm always fascinated when I talk to Jewish people because it's a religion, but it's also a group and the people, you can be Jewish and not practice the faith.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Mm-hmm.

Bruce Anthony: And you can also be Jewish and not be ethnically Jewish.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Mm-hmm.

Bruce Anthony: Do you consider yourself, an American standards White.

And if you do watching roots as that young child, you have what they call now white guilt, or did you look at it just as this, I don't understand this. This is just horrible. In other words, did you take on guilt or was it just, this is horrible?

Dr. Robin Bernstein: I don't think I did take on guilt. I don't think that's what I felt. I think what I, because remember I was looking at it as a [00:12:00] whole and I understood that nobody in my individual family had been in the United States before the Civil War. Actually, that's not true. I recently found out that somebody was, but at the time I thought that nobody was.

And so my family had no personal connection to enslavement from any perspective. So I wouldn't say that what I felt was guilt. I would say that what I felt was horror. And I would also say that what I felt was a sense of responsibility as an American, and it was a deep sense of responsibility as an American.

I understood that what I was looking at was not my people per se, that none of the characters in roots. Were anything like my personal family, I understood that, but I also understood that all of them were like me and that they were Americans and I was an American. And what I really understood, I wouldn't describe it.

I wouldn't say that what [00:13:00] I felt was white guilt. What I would say was that I felt a very serious moral sense of responsibility as an American, and that is something I still feel.

Bruce Anthony: Okay. Alright. That's really interesting. I love, I love getting different perspectives. That's the reason why I started the show. Ladies and gentlemen. I love getting different perspectives of people looking at things differently because you see this push to erase history and we'll get into more of this later in the conversation to, to erase history. And they frame it as well, we can't teach little kids this because they feel guilty, but when you don't come from it or don't have a direct connection from it like yourself, it's like, I don't have anything to feel guilty about. I don't think anybody should have anything to feel guilty about history. But also it's just horrific. But that's enough about me pontificating. Let's get to your book.

Discovering William Freeman's Story

Bruce Anthony: So the latest book, Freeman's Challenge looks at one man's story to uncover the beginnings of [00:14:00] the prison for-profit system. How did you first discover this story and what made you realize it could reveal something foundational about America?

Dr. Robin Bernstein: I discovered the story by accident and I think that's how a lot of history books get started. I stumbled across something that I thought should not exist and it and it did exist, and that made me understand that. Something that I thought about history was not true. So what I stumbled across was a a reference.

It was literally in a footnote to a stage performance that happened in 1846 in Auburn, New York. I had never heard of Auburn. I didn't know anything about it. And what happened in this stage performance, according to this footnote, was that it showed on stage a black man murdering a white family. And I immediately, so my background is in history of the [00:15:00] 19th century and in particular the history of theater.

And I said, wait a minute. Wait what? This thing existed on stage in 1846. And I knew that that was. Almost impossible. And the reason I knew that was that in the 19th century and especially in the mid-century, white people absolutely did not want to see representations of black on white violence on stage.

And they did not want to see this. They wanted so badly not to see this, that they would actually doctor productions of Othello to remove that imagery. So they were going to enormous lengths to avoid this particular spectacle. And I said, wait a minute. What people, white people were paying for this in Auburn, New York in 1846?

So at first I thought it must be a mistake, but then I quickly verified that it was true. And so I thought, okay, that means this is so anomalous. Something big [00:16:00] must have happened in Auburn, New York in 1846 that would cause white people to behave in a way that was radically different from white people at the same time in other places.

And so I thought, what was it that so weird? So what I, so I started researching it. I was just so curious and I knew that, that something was very strange. So I started researching it and I found out that the, the show was about somebody named William Freeman. I had never heard of William Freeman and that it was based on.

True fact. It was based on a real murder. And so I started digging deeper and deeper and deeper. So when I started, I didn't know anything about the Auburn prison. I didn't know, I wasn't thinking about the history of prison for profit. What I was, what what really hooked me was the fact that something happened that caused race to shake something.

Race shaking happened in [00:17:00] 1846 to cause this white appetite for this particular kind of spectacle. Now what we know is that today that white appetite is enormous. There's an enormous white appetite for spectacles of black on white violence. And but that was not the norm in 1846. So something happened to make people, white people in that moment, less like their peers and more like us.

What could it be? So I started diving in deeper and deeper and deeper. So I learned who William Freeman was. I'm sure we're gonna talk about this, this more. But the more I learned about what he, about who he was and what he did, that led me to a much bigger story. The big story I realized, and it took me a long time to realize this, the really big story was behind the murder.

The, the murder was [00:18:00] not the story, what was behind the murder. William Freeman had a really important claim. He had a, something very important to say, and what he had to say had been suppressed for almost two centuries. And once I realized that, I knew I had to write the book.

Bruce Anthony: Okay. Alright, so I was gonna do this later, but now you, you've reeled me in. I don't know if you noticed, but I leaned in as you started. Just a fantastic storyteller. Can you tell us about. William Freeman because when I hear that name, I'll automatically think of a former slave that became a free man.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So William Freeman was always free. He was born free, and that's actually really important to the story. So William Freeman was African American and also Native American On his mother's side specifically, he was Stockbridge Narragansett on his mother's side. He was born just coincidentally in Auburn, New York, [00:19:00] and.

He grew up there. He was the the, his father had been enslaved and his grandparents had been enslaved, so his grandparents were Harry and Kate. They had been forced in 1793 to come to the land that would become Auburn. It was land that had just very recently been stolen from the Cuba people. Harry and Kate were forced by their enslave to come to this newly empty well, it was not at all empty, but it was newly available to white ownership land, and they were forced to start building the buildings that would become Auburn.

They eventually became free, and when they became free, they chose the name Freeman. So what you said before is exactly right. What they were articulating when they chose that name and when their children chose that same name and their grandchildren inherited that name, [00:20:00] what they were saying was what mattered to them.

They were saying what they cared about. They were saying who they thought of themselves to be. As of, of course, you know, and I'm sure many of your listeners know many people who became free from slavery, chose the name of their former enslave, and Harry and Kate absolutely could have done that, but they didn't.

They named themselves Freeman. So what that tells us is what mattered to this family. And William Freeman was born in in 1824. So he was born free in New York State. This was all happening in New York State. He was the first, he was part of the first fully free generation in his family. So so that's, that's who he was.

And he grew up in this town of Auburn, which at the time was a pretty small town, but it was growing. Part of the reason it was growing was because it was the home of the original prison for profit. And, and I hope we're, we're gonna [00:21:00] talk about that, how Prison for Profit was actually invented in Auburn, New York.

The place where William Freeman just happened to be born. So in his childhood, he had a hard childhood in a lot of ways. His father died when he was young. His mother struggled to raise him and his sister and his two sisters, one of whom was probably developmentally disabled, although we'll never really know.

She struggled to raise him. He had to work from an early age, but in a lot of ways his life was happy when he was growing up. He was part of the founding family of Auburn, New York, the founding black family. He was part of a beloved and deeply respected family, and he and his family loved him very much so that that was who William Freeman started out as.

Bruce Anthony: Okay, so you brought up the prison for [00:22:00] profit. Let's kind of get into that.

The Birth of the Prison for Profit System

Bruce Anthony: And most people think that Prison for Profit started in the 1980s and nineties, but through your work at William Freeman, you're finding out Auburn New York 1840s. So can you walk us through how Early America led, led the groundwork for a monetization incarceration for

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Yeah.

Bruce Anthony: incarceration?

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Yeah. Thank you. And I love that phrase, monetizing car incarceration. When we think about prison for profit, very often what we're thinking of is, private prisons, and you're absolutely right that private prisons, prisons that are themselves, corporations, that is a 20th century invention that did not exist in the 19th century.

The Auburn Prison was a public prison. I mean, it was a state prison always, and it was never itself private. But the claim that I'm making in this book is that if you have a prison that exists at its [00:23:00] absolute core to monetize, as you said, you have a prison that exists at its absolute core to make money, to make profits.

That's a prison for profit, and that's one of the claims that I'm really making in this book. I think we need to redefine prison for profit and not limit it to private prisons, which are actually a very small percentage of prisons today. What we need to do is look at a much larger. Entanglement between capitalism and prisons.

And when we look at that larger entanglement, we see a much longer and mu very different history. So let me tell you the story of how Prison for profit began in Auburn, New York. And it began before William Freeman was born. It began in 1816. So, so basically what you had in Auburn, New York was a group of white businessmen.

And these were people who wanted to make money. And that's really all [00:24:00] they cared about. They did not care about, justice. They did not care about protecting the public. They did not care about reforming criminals and, you know, helping them to lead better lives. They didn't care about any of that.

What they wanted to do was make money. And what happened was that in 1816. The New York State Government, offered a contract of $20,000, which was the equivalent of about half a million dollars. Today, they offered this contract of $20,000 to a vicinity that would build a prison. Now, from the state's perspective, this, they were offering money to build a prison because they thought they needed a prison.

At the time, New York State had only one prison, and it was overrun. So from the governmental perspective, they were just trying to get more prisons. But these white businessmen in Auburn, New York, they had an incredible insight, which [00:25:00] to us is obvious, but it's only obvious to us because people in the past came up with it.

What they realized at the time, Auburn was a tiny little village of about 2000 people. What they realized was that if they got this sudden influx of the equivalent of half a million dollars, all of a sudden it was gonna completely transform the economy of Auburn. And remember then there would be more money coming in every year.

So, I mean, you know, think about it. If you've got a little tiny village with 2000 people and you just flood it with half a million dollars, it's gonna change everything. And that to us, that's so obvious. But this was a completely original idea at the time. So these white businessmen put together a contract.

They bid and they bid because they wanted to turn Auburn from a village into a city. That was their goal. So they had, so that was their first idea. Let's take money from the [00:26:00] state. To transform our economy, but then they had a second idea. The second idea was to build the prison on the banks of a river.

There was a river that goes right through Auburn. It's still there. They built it on the banks of this river for the purpose of harnessing water power. Why did they want water power? Because they wanted to have factories, industrial factories built into the prison. Their second idea, in addition to taking money from the state, was to have prisoners forced to labor, to manufacture consumer goods inside the prison.

And then they had a third idea. The third idea was to have local businesses, including their own leasing, the prisoner's labor, basically convict leasing. They had this [00:27:00] idea of convict leasing, so. The structure that they came up with was they built the factories into the prison. They got the prisoners, local businesses took possession of the factories, they bought the labor of the prisoners.

The prisoners got no money, not 1 cent, nothing. They forced the prisoners to labor, to build, to make things like shoes and animal harnesses and carpets. And the prisoners were making the, were making these goods. The companies then sold the goods throughout New York State and also throughout the Northeast.

So this was an incredible operation. They were getting money and value from three different directions. They were getting money from the state. They were getting money from these local businesses that were taking the labor of prisoners, and then they were getting the value of the labor of the prisoners.[00:28:00]

This was. A totally new construction of prisons. This was a new concept of what a prison can be. This is a prison as a factory. Basically, the whole prison functioned as one giant factory.

Auburn Prison: A New Form of Slavery

Dr. Robin Bernstein: This was the Auburn State Prison, and let's be really clear about some of the things that didn't matter to the people who started the prison.

Justice did not matter. Punishment did not matter. It wa they weren't trying to punish the prisoners. Now, the Auburn State Prison was an extremely violent place, and the reason it was so violent was because it is very hard to get people to work for no compensation. And really the only way you can get people to work for no compensation is through violence.

So it was an extremely violent place, but the purpose of the violence was not to punish. [00:29:00] The purpose of the violence was to extract labor. So this was a radical new idea about what a prison was. And this is what grew in Auburn, New York. And this is what was up and running at the moment when William Freeman was born less than a mile away.

Bruce Anthony: this is

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Yep.

Bruce Anthony: years before we get to that 1980s, and they have literally written the blueprint to the very things that we see today. And also during that time where we are 60 years the Civil War where slavery is gonna be hotly contested, but there's already kind of murmurs and. In the country. created a new form of slavery, but getting the state finance it as a businessman, that's, I'm thinking of [00:30:00] myself as a businessman.

That's brilliant. As a human being. Good God. That is devious. That is Lex Luther, level evil and, and brilliant at the same time. I don't mean to marvel at the intellect, the business intellect of these people, but in a capitalist society, they figured out a blueprint that worked. I don't know why. We don't understand.

I don't know how, what happened to Auburn. I'm sure we'll get into it, but, okay. So they have this forced labor. Labor, they created new form of slavery.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Yeah. And they use that word, by the way.

Bruce Anthony: Oh, they actually used the word,

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Yes. Proudly.

Bruce Anthony: they weren't hiding it. Okay.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Oh, no, no, no, no. They called the prisoners, quote, slaves of the state, unquote. And let's also put this in context for what was else was happening in New York State at the time. This was at the exact moment when New York State was engaging in what was called [00:31:00] gradual emancipation.

So basically, black people in New York state at this exact time were slowly becoming free. And we can see that in William Freeman's own family. His grandparents became free, his father started out enslaved, but his father became free. And this was, this was part of what was happening. New York State was transforming from a slavery based economy to a state capitalism based economy.

And the prison was. Absolutely a part of that. So there's nothing coincidental going on here. So at the exact moment when New York was becoming a free state, this new kind of prison is built in Auburn, and they proudly called the prisoners, slaves of the state.

Bruce Anthony: Now the prisoners, I, what was their demographic makeup.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Yeah, that's a great question. [00:32:00] So, and this also, I, this is so interesting to me. The very first group of prisoners, the very first ones to occupy the prison, who also, by the way, were forced to build the prison. They built the prison and then they were forced to occupy it. As far as my research shows, a hundred percent of them were white.

So this tells us something really important. This tells us that the prison was not invented to re enslave black people, per se. It was built to enslave people, and this is a really important difference.

Origins of Capitalism and Prisons

Dr. Robin Bernstein: This interrupts some of the stories that we've received about the origins of capitalism and prisons.

What we, the, the popular story that we've received. Is that Prison for Profit was invented in the South. It was invented after the Civil War as a way of re enslaving black people. And this is a radically different story. It's 50 years [00:33:00] earlier. It's in the north, not the south. It it's story about, absolutely about slavery by another name.

Racial Dynamics in Early Prisons

Dr. Robin Bernstein: But it is a different racial dynamic. It was started not for the purpose of re enslaving black people. It was started for the purpose of extracting forced labor value for the purpose of serving capitalism. So that was the very, very first group of, of prisoners. But as you can guess, it did not stay white.

So it starts as a white thing. It does not stay that way. It very, very quickly becomes.

William Freeman's Incarceration

Dr. Robin Bernstein: A disproportionately black population, so by the time William Freeman. Was incarcerated, and we'll get to this where he was incarcerated. By the time he was incarcerated, approximately one in nine of the prisoners were black.

And to put that in [00:34:00] perspective, at the time this was 1840s, about 2% of New York state was black. So what that tells us is that black people were overrepresented by about fourfold. So we go from black people being not represented at all to being grossly overrepresented in about three decades. And now of course, in New York state black and brown people constitute about 70% of incarcerated people in that state.

So just like you said before about how we're seeing a blueprint for today in this story in Freeman's challenge from the 1840s, that's exactly what we're seeing. We're seeing an escalation. Of racialized incarceration. We're seeing the roots of that.

Bruce Anthony: I would love to, I don't know if you've done, I don't know if you know the history of it, but I know in Virginia. in the middle, 17 hundreds, they outlawed [00:35:00] indentured servitude and they allowed, and most indentured services in s most in indentured servants were Irish

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Mm-hmm.

Bruce Anthony: they got rid of it and allowed them to start to own land and things of that nature.

Was there something similar around the same time in New York and these first white prisoners, did they happen to be Irish?

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Some of them were but most of them weren't So a lot of them were immigrants actually of these, these first prisoners. But your question about indentured servitude is really important.

Indentured Servitude and Gradual Emancipation

Dr. Robin Bernstein: So indentured servitude was one of the ways that slavery, black slavery continued in New York state after the quote unquote official end of slavery. So the way gradual emancipation worked in New York State was that after 1827, everybody born in New York State was free regardless of race.

However, [00:36:00] for people who were born of formerly of, of, of enslaved parents, so up before 1827 people who were born of enslaved of at least an enslaved mother, they were born free. But they were forced into indentured servitude for decades. So what this meant was that two of William Freeman's uncles were born technically free, but they were in, they were indentured, they were forced into indentured to their mothers in slavery for decades.

So slave and for, for, the term of indenture was 21 years. So William Freeman's older uncle, he was technically born free, but became fully free, really free in 1848. So this is a way that, that slavery just dragged on and on and on for slavery. And that was [00:37:00] a specifically racial anti-black indentured servitude.

Bruce Anthony: How does the story of William Freeman and the murder play in all of this?

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Yeah, so, so William Freeman is growing up in Auburn, New York. He's growing up literally a mile away from the original prison for profit, and it's big. Oh, Bruce, this building is so big. It still exists, by the way. It is. The Auburn prison still exists. It is today the oldest continually operating maximum security prison in the United States.

This thing is maximum security. This thing is huge, so it's dominating the entire town, which is rapidly becoming a city. So he grows up here, [00:38:00] he's working and he's got, in some ways a hard life, but in other ways a good life. But everything changes for William Freeman in 1840. In that year, he's 15 years old.

He's accused of stealing a horse.

Bruce Anthony: Hmm.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: There's no hard evidence against him, but it doesn't matter. He's tried, he's convicted, and he's sentenced to five years hard forced labor in the Auburn State Prison. He's a kid, he's 15. He's furious.

Freeman's Resistance and Injury

Dr. Robin Bernstein: So he goes into this prison and he immediately begins resisting. He tells his jailers that he does not want to work.

He does not wanna work for nothing. That was the phrase he used. He said, I don't wanna work for nothing. And he meant two things. By that, he meant nothing, meaning no crime. He had committed no [00:39:00] crime. So he that he didn't wanna work for nothing when he had committed no crime, but he also meant no pay. He, he thought of himself as a citizen.

He was a citizen. He remember, he's part of the first fully free generation in his family. He's among the first fully free generation in New York state. He is a citizen, and what part of what's core to that identity is the ability to work and be compensated for the labor, for your own labor. So he says, I don't wanna work for nothing.

He says it explicitly over and over again. As I mentioned, the Auburn State Prison is an incredibly violent place. The retribution for his resistance was truly terrible. There was enormous violence against him. And in the worst moment of violence, he, a, a guard, beat him over the head and beat him so severely that he had a, a brain [00:40:00] injury.

And he also lost hearing in one of his ears and lost all of it in one of his ears and most of it in his other ear. So he's enduring this horrible violence, forced labor, but he keeps resisting. He keeps resisting after he gets outta prison. It's 1845 now. He's 20 years old. He's deaf, he's horrifically traumatized.

He has a brain injury and he wants what he wants. The single most important thing that he wants is back pay. He wants to be paid for five years of labor. His perspective is that the state has stolen five years of wages from him and he wants to recover those wages from the state.

Freeman's Legal Campaign and Murder

Dr. Robin Bernstein: So he launches a legal campaign, and again, you know, [00:41:00] this is a 20-year-old person who has spent a quarter of his life in prison and he launches a legal campaign.

He goes to the governor and and tries to get the governor to help him and to recover these lost wages. He is laughed at and he's dismissed. He tries for six months to get his back pay, and after six months he changes his goal. He no longer wants back pay. What he wants is payback.

Bruce Anthony: Hmm.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: And at that point, William Freeman committed a murder.

And when I say that, I'm not giving anything away. It's right there in the title of the book, Freeman's Challenge, the Murder That Shook America's original Prison for profit. He committed a murder that challenged the Auburn State Prison and it really challenged the very idea of [00:42:00] prison for profit. And he made this mighty prison shake.

Bruce Anthony: Hmm. Wow. Okay. I don't want to give, I, want people to go get your book

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Yeah.

Bruce Anthony: want people to, we don't wanna give too much away. So go get the book ladies, gentlemen, if you want to hear the continuation. This is to be continued. I want to get more into this monetized incarceration and more into your research.

So your research shows that some of these histories we've known at one time, but got buried or forgotten, which is happening so much right now. Why do you think Americans tend to forget or are encouraged to forget these uncomfortable parts of our history?

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Yeah, that's a wonderful question. I love that question. I think that the uncomfortable parts of our history make people [00:43:00] uncomfortable, and they especially make people in power uncomfortable.

White Pride and Prison for Profit

Dr. Robin Bernstein: In the particular case of Auburn, one of the things that William Freeman challenged was white pride. So the white.

People who were running the Auburn RU running Auburn's businesses, both inside the prison and outside the prison, made Auburn prosperous. The prison was a source of pride because the prison was so evilly innovative. It was being, it, it was the identity of Auburn. It made Auburn literally world famous, famous people were coming from Europe to tour the Auburn State Prison and learn about it and take the model back to Europe.

Because by the way, once people figured out that a prison could make money, you better believe that that idea spread. And by the time William Freeman was born, there were prisons for profit built in, in, in, [00:44:00] in literal self-conscious imitation of Auburn were built all over the United States and all over the world.

So some of the best known prisons that we think of today from the 19th century were literally built in Auburn's model. So when we think about San Quentin, for example, or Sing, sing or Parchman, these were built in the model of Auburn. So. White Auburn Knights were prosperous because of this system of prison for profit.

They were proud. This was their identity. Remember also, Auburn was the name of the city. It was the name of the prison, and it was the name of the model of incarceration. The Auburn system meant this system of incarceration. So this was pride. So when William Freeman named it as a form of organized theft, [00:45:00] wow.

You know, William Freeman was saying, I have had my wages stolen from me by the Auburn State Prison. This is not justice. This is organized theft.

Bruce Anthony: Hmm.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Well, you better believe white people did not wanna hear that. So they didn't wanna hear it in 1845 and they don't wanna hear it now. So it's not just that people forget things that are uncomfortable, people actively refuse to incorporate knowledge that challenges who they think they are.

William Freeman told White Auburn that the city was not what they wanted it to be, that they were not who they thought of themselves as. And you better believe that white people did not take that very well.

Bruce Anthony: So I always use this term moral gymnastics. We all do it.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Yeah.

Bruce Anthony: not gonna call anybody. I'm not gonna call out anybody else 'cause I would be a [00:46:00] hypocrite. I'd do the same thing. We all have these moral gymnastics and I'm sure the people of this town listening to this man. William Freeman and not wanting to hear anything about it because it is an attack against them.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Mm-hmm.

Bruce Anthony: in their mind they're thinking this is a criminal

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Modern Echoes of Historical Injustices

Bruce Anthony: when you look at the current debates, you know, whether it's mass incarceration, police reform, or calls to abolish private prisons,

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Mm-hmm.

Bruce Anthony: echoes from history do you hear most loudly?

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Oh, oh. Most loudly. I mean, I hear so many echoes but you've asked for most loudly. I think what I hear most loudly, you are absolutely right, that they wanted to understand William Freeman simply as a criminal. And they also wanted to understand him as an irrational person. So remember, he [00:47:00] did have a head injury.

He did have a brain injury, and he did have certain difficulties as a result of that brain injury. And also, he was deaf. He was deaf end, I should say. So. What they wanted to do was think of him basically two different ways emerged of thinking about William Freeman in the time. One was that he was this purely vicious person for, simply because that's who he was.

And of course they racialized that. So one of the claims I'm making in the book is that William Freeman's trial, which got very big, very fast, and got, and got publicized nationally, was one of the origins of the racist lie of black criminalization. That this is so, so this is a really big echo that we hear today.

This idea that this racist idea that there is some sort of necessary inherent [00:48:00] magnetism between blackness and criminality.

Bruce Anthony: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: This is a William Freeman's story is actually one of the points of origin of that story, of that lie. But then the other thing that they wanted to believe was that he was simply 100% irrational.

That he was quote unquote a lunatic. And if you, you know, he's there critiquing prison for profit. And if you want to defend prison for profit, it is very convenient to say, this person is purely irrational. Nothing this person has to say has any validity at all. It's just the ravings of a lunatic. So they, they found both ways to, to not just dismiss him, but to muffle what he was saying.

And, his, even his own lawyer, he had a lawyer who was actually William Henry Seward, who was at the time the former governor of New York State. William Henry Seward actually [00:49:00] defended William Freeman, but he defended him with the insanity defense. William, his own lawyer, was muffling what he had to say.

And most scholars since that time have simply taken William Henry Seward's perspective for granted and have said that when people have talked about William Freeman, they have basically thought of him as an irrational person, as, as a quote unquote lunatic. And my big aha. When I was researching this, I'm researching it more and more and more, and I'm coming to this slow realization that what William Freeman was saying was completely rational and actually really important.

He had been called irrational and he did have certain mental problems as a result of his brain injury, but his central ethical moral claim was completely rational. So so [00:50:00] going back to your question about what do I see in William Freeman's story today? I see the ongoing and always escalating criminalization of black people.

And I also see the the suppression of the idea that we can critique prison for profit from a moral perspective.

Bruce Anthony: Hmm Hmm. So you obviously have done great work and you've gotten praise for it, but I imagine. You also encountered some resistance because you're challenging dominant narratives, kind of like attacking quote unquote white pride. Right?

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Mm-hmm.

Bruce Anthony: while people are doing what I love to call moral gymnastics, what kind of pushbacks do you face and how do you navigate that?

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Yeah, I, you know, much pushback. [00:51:00] I have occasionally gotten pushback. I did an event in New York City where, one member of the audience was. Just outraged that I could have any sympathy at all for somebody who did commit a murder. And I mean, you know, let's be really honest, William Freeman, after he got out of prison, he did commit a murder.

And, what I wanted to do in the book was treat everybody's pain with great seriousness. I did not want to trivialize anybody's pain. I wanted, of course, to take William Freeman's pain enormously seriously. And I also wanted to take seriously the pain of the people he killed and the survivors of that murder.

So I took everybody very seriously. Where I have gotten pushback is on taking William Freeman's pain seriously. So in this one [00:52:00] particular event. A woman was just really angry that I could have any that I could take seriously the pain of somebody who did in fact commit a murder.

Bruce Anthony: Hmm. Okay. You are a professor, you are guiding the young minds of today.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: I'm trying.

Bruce Anthony: What do you notice about the younger generations of students and approaching these types of topics of race, justice, and history? Do you see shifts in how they are thinking compared to when you first started teaching?

Dr. Robin Bernstein: That's an such an interesting question. Yeah, I've seen all kinds of changes at this point. Everything is changing so rapidly. Minute to minute I feel like I can't, characterize. Where my students are right now because they just change so [00:53:00] fast. The world is changing so fast. What I will say is that, you know, there was a time when I first started teaching when critiques of prisons were very rare. And most people that I was encountering in the classroom were not thinking critically about the history of prisons at all. They just didn't know very much about the history of prisons. And the prison abolition movement has done a fantastic job of getting the word out into the popular into the popular consciousness that prisons are political, that they are not, they do not simply exist to to administer justice.

And in fact, they might in work counter to that goal. So the idea that prisons are political, that prisons can be abolished, that, that the prison abolition movement exists, that is a big change I've seen in students that that's pretty common knowledge now among my students. And [00:54:00] 20 years ago it wasn't.

Bruce Anthony: So I have a question about abolishing prisons. Now I look, I'm all for. Certain things, defunding the police and things of that nature. When people say, abolish the police, I'm not, I'm not for that. 'cause I need to call somebody if my house gets broken into or I have an issue, I need to call somebody.

I can't take care of it myself all the time. The abolishing of prisons, what is the alternative? because there, though, I believe there are a majority of prisoners that could be rehabilitated. seen them. I've met them. I know them.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Mm-hmm.

Bruce Anthony: I also know people should never be let out.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Mm-hmm.

Bruce Anthony: So like how do you, how does that work with just abolishing prisons?

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Yeah. Well.

Bruce Anthony: I.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Ruth Gilmore, who is one of the thought leaders of the prison abolition [00:55:00] movement, has made a really compelling case that there is no simple substitution, like we will abolish prisons and then there will be this new thing. Instead that her perspective that she has articulated is that there is a suite of societal changes that would have to come first to make prisons unnecessary.

And and we can think about things from, reparative justice movements. We can think about we can think about treatment for drug addiction, for example. There are many, many things that when you put them all together and implement them all over a long period of time, prisons would become less and less, quote unquote necessary and eventually could dwindle down to nothing.

So that's, to me, that's a really compelling vision, I think. My own perspective. So that's, that's the perspective that is articulated in the prison [00:56:00] abolition movement. But now I'll say what I think, what I think is that we know that prisons do not do what they claim to do. What they claim to do is make the world a safer place or make the United States, for example, a safer place and a more just place.

And we have so much evidence that they simply fail to do that. So my question is, if they don't, if they fail at what they say they are trying to do, then what is the justification for continuing down this path that we know doesn't work? And by the way, it didn't work even in the 19th century, and there was a huge amount of evidence from the very beginning that prisons were not making communities safer.

They were not administering justice. So if we know they're not doing what they say they exist to do, [00:57:00] what justification is there to continue them? So I am in favor of safety. I am in favor of justice, and the question that I am asking is, how can we actually have these things?

Bruce Anthony: Mm-hmm. This is heavy, right? This is, this is heavy on my soul. This is a heavy topic because I know people who have been incarcerated. I know people who have been wrongfully incarcerated. I know

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Mm-hmm.

Bruce Anthony: have been right. They, they were incarcerated rightfully,

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Mm-hmm.

Bruce Anthony: And when you're dealing with this and you're, and you bring it up in New York, state that 70, you said 70%

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Roughly. Mm-hmm.

Bruce Anthony: 70% are black and brown

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Mm-hmm.

Bruce Anthony: and you're doing the research and you're finding out it goes all the way back to, to the 18, 1810s, right?

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Mm-hmm.

Bruce Anthony: you hope?

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Oh.

Bruce Anthony: what can ordinary people do today to better understand and engage with the history [00:58:00] you're uncovering?

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Hope and Activism for Change

Dr. Robin Bernstein: What gives me hope, what gives me hope is activist communities. Activist communities are pushing back against prison for profit in particular. In New York State, there is legislation that is being proposed and is being voted on to do two things that William Freeman was exactly calling for.

There is legislation pending in New York State to to make sure that any prison, any labor that happens inside prisons benefit the prisoners. This is really crucial. William Freeman was not against working. William Freeman actually wanted to work. He wanted to be compensated. And this is exactly what people today want.

It's the, it's the exact same claim. So this one bill called the No Slavery in New York Act will [00:59:00] ensure that any labor that happens in prisons is first of all, freely chosen, that no prisoner can be forced to work against their will. And if they choose to work, that the prison, that the the labor will benefit them in some way specifically monetarily.

And then there's a second bill that is moving through legislation in New York State, which is about about the conditions of labor. Basically making sure that labor conditions are safe, that they are, that they, that they, that they support life. And this is also what William Freeman was all about.

William Freeman wanted to have a life. He wanted to have a livable life, and that is what the Auburn State Prison deprived him of. So. When I think about these pieces of legislation that are moving forward, I feel a lot of hope. I mean, it also makes me enormously sad that the exact claims that William Freeman [01:00:00] made, we still have to make them today because they have not been achieved.

But there are a number of states that have added language to their state constitutions, specifically outlawing carceral slavery, specifically countering the exact model that was born in Auburn, New York in 1816. So a number of states have actually already added that language to their constitutions or taken away the language, permitting it.

Nevada is one example. So, we can do this, we can change the, the evil geniuses in Auburn in 1816. You compared them to Lex Luther. And I think that's actually a, an apt comparison. I think the, the language that I've used to think about them is that they were evil geniuses. They were evil geniuses, but there's a lot of us countering the evil that they created, and there's more of us than there are of them.

Bruce Anthony: [01:01:00] For every Lex Luther that needs to be a Superman and Supergirl. So

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Mm-hmm.

Bruce Anthony: Dr. Robin, what would you like to leave my audience with?

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Hmm. Well, I think what I'd like to leave your audience with is a very simple idea, which is the idea that a non incarcerated person can and should benefit from the labor of an incarcerated person. That's wrong. I am a non incarcerated person. I do not think I have any right to benefit from the incarceration of another person, including through things like tax benefits.

The idea that, you know, a prison gives me a tax break because it contributes to the economy. Well, why should I get any kind of break based on the incarceration of other people? So I think that's what I'd like to leave your audience [01:02:00] with. And then the, this idea that non incarcerated people have no right to benefit from the labor of incarcerated people.

And then finally I hope people will check out Freeman's Challenge, the murder that Shook America's original free original prison for profit. If they do, they're going to meet an incredible teenager from history who was enormously brave. William Freeman was a flawed person. But he was so brave. He stood up against prison for profit at its source.

He stood up against the entire city of Auburn. He stood up against prison guards while they were beating him. He was brave.

Bruce Anthony: Hmm. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Robin Bernstein, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has [01:03:00] been just a delightful conversation, and I know I've definitely learned a lot. Being historian didn't know, and I know my audience has as well, so thank you for sharing with us.

Dr. Robin Bernstein: Thank you so much, Bruce. This has been wonderful.

Bruce Anthony: It was my pleasure.

Man. That was a heavy and powerful conversation. As a historian, I thought I understood the evolution of incarceration in this country from the war on drugs to mass incarceration, but to hear how it all started in Auburn, New York, who A place I've never heard of before in the early 1800. This is absolutely information that has blown my mind.

It's wild and sad how these evil geniuses, as Dr. Bernstein called them, created a blueprint that still shapes our systems today. A systems that find a way to turn punishment into prophet. And as she reminded us, this isn't just history, it's policy, it's economics. It's morality. Dr. Bernstein's [01:04:00] work reminds us that history isn't just in the past, it's in the walls we still build, and the people we still can find.

And like William Freeman, whose story she so brilliantly resurrects, we have to keep demanding accountability, asking who really benefits. When justice becomes a business, if you wanna understand where this system came from and what it takes to change it, go pick up Freeman's Challenge, the murder that Shook America's original prison for profit, Dr.

Robin Bernstein. I want to thank you for your brilliance, your courage, and your scholarship, and for everyone listening and watching, stay curious, stay honest, and keep asking the questions that history doesn't want to answer. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching, and until next time, as always, I'll holler.

Woo. That was a hell of a show. Thank you for rocking with us here on Unsolicited Perspectives with Bruce Anthony. Now, before you [01:05:00] go, don't forget to follow, subscribe, like, comment, and share our podcast. Wherever you're listening or watching it to it, pass it along to your friends. If you enjoy it, that means the people that you rock, we'll enjoy it also.

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