This book argues that in the antebellum US South, enslaved people developed their own emotional ideologies, styles and practices to refuse, resist and survive the institution of slavery. In response to the devastating experiences of sale and separation, enslaved people created their own affective value system to aid them in maintaining familial relationships in the face of enslavers’ attempts to decimate them. The Epilogue emphasises that racialised ideologies surrounding Black emotion and white people’s attempts to restrict Black people’s emotional expressions have not ended, evidenced by the epidemic of violence against Black Americans in the twenty-first century. In resistance to such violence, activists centre emotions such as rage, anger and joy within their protest movements. African Americans’ investment in their own understandings and expressions of joy, love, hope, anger and grief in their resistance strategies ultimately has roots in enslaved people’s responses to the violence they had to endure.