In her outstanding book, Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit, Robin Bernstein combines rigorous research, critical acumen, and a riveting narrative to recover the life and death of William Freeman, a teenager of African and Stockbridge–Narragansett descent who was imprisoned in the Auburn State Prison (now the Auburn Correctional Facility) in upstate New York in 1840. By offering readers a vivid portrait of Freeman, his ancestral and immediate family members, his community, and his world, Bernstein demonstrates how this Afro-Native teenager’s experiences and actions, and the public’s reactions to them, complicates what (we think) we know about the development of for-profit prisons in the United States and the ways they perpetuate white supremacist libels regarding Indigenous and Black American personhood. Certainly, this book about Freeman and the people who brutalized him, labored with him, advocated for him, condemned him, and loved him constitutes an important contribution to the overlapping historiographies of US incarceration, capitalism, colonialism, and racism. But Freeman’s Challenge is also a compelling model for scholars who want to make an impact by writing accessible scholarship of contemporary relevance and dire import.

When a court convicted the fifteen-year-old Freeman of horse theft—a crime he insisted he did not commit—he was sentenced to five years in the Auburn State Prison. Alongside other men imprisoned there, he was forced to work without wages for the duration of his sentence, filing iron fittings for horse harnesses, dyeing silk, and making carpets. (This history lives in the present: people currently incarcerated at the facility make New York State license plates and are paid, on average, $0.65 per hour: see “Made in USA,” at www.ilr.cornell.edu.) When Freeman challenged the compulsory extraction of his labor, he suffered torture and repeated physical abuse at the hands of the prison’s employees, including a blow to the head that resulted in permanent hearing loss and cognitive disabilities. When his sentence concluded, Freeman confronted numerous obstacles as he attempted to rebuild his life as a citizen of Auburn’s free Black community. Overwhelmed by these challenges, he killed four members of a local white family soon after his release. Bernstein tracks the national panic that ensued after the quadruple murder, tracing how Freeman’s capture, court trial, and death from tuberculosis while awaiting a second trial (due to jury selection irregularities and other problems) attracted widespread attention.

One of the many impressive aspects of this book is the way Bernstein tackles the problem of writing about a person who, after enduring innumerable acts of violence, committed a horrific act of violence himself. She does so with honesty, transparency, respect, and empathy, leaning into the complexities and nuances of the story rather than flattening or shying away from them. Analyzing newspapers, images, textual compendia, and a plethora of other materials, Bernstein investigates how Freeman’s actions sparked discussions about carceral practices at Auburn and elsewhere. In the process, she reveals how antagonists and defenders of Freeman advanced two intertwined theories about Blackness: “one of social deprivation, the other of inherent menace” (150). Some commentators insisted that Freeman’s actions offered evidence of the alleged intrinsic “criminality” of Black and Native Americans (153); others argued that to prevent similar tragedies in the future, Black and Native Americans needed expanded access to a (colonial, white supremacist) education. As Bernstein notes, “These stories appeared to be rivals, but in fact they supported. . . the need for white control in the postslavery North” (150).

Methodologically, Freeman’s Challenge exhibits practices commonly associated with cultural history, social history, and/or microhistory—for example, a focus on individuals and the communities they inhabit; extensive archival research, including documents or artifacts that tend to be overlooked by historians; and the judicious use of speculation or imagination to mitigate absences in the archive. Throughout the book, she shines a spotlight on how Freeman and other incarcerated men resisted their oppressors, claimed agency, and declared personhood despite the exploitative and punitive practices at Auburn that were designed to subdue them—practices that were subsequently adopted by many other prisons, as Bernstein shows.

The author’s background as a theatre and performance scholar informs the book in intriguing ways. Her insights about how Freeman was staged, both inside and outside of the prison, underscore how individuals and collectives leveraged performance to popularize ideas about anti-indigeneity, anti-Blackness, and white supremacy during the mid-nineteenth century. For example, Bernstein offers critical readings of tourists’ and other visitors’ engagement with imprisoned laborers at Auburn (19–20, 37–8), spectacular illustrations of Freeman that appeared in newspapers (113–17), and a chapter about lecturer-performer George Mastin, who capitalized on the public’s obsession with Freeman by presenting a series of paintings depicting the quadruple murder, accompanied by verbal commentary, music, and dancing (151–68).

Freeman’s story, as told by Bernstein, artfully illuminates many of the cultural, social, economic, and political factors that have shaped the industrial prison complex in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present. Freeman insisted that he be treated with respect and dignity at the Auburn State Prison, up to and including compensation for his labor. His challenge to the carceral system occurred nearly two centuries ago, but Bernstein persuasively argues that his story remains painfully relevant. At a time when the value of stories like Freeman’s, and of the humanities in general, is being questioned more than ever before, our field would benefit enormously from more books like this one.