Review by Eleanor J. Bader
When Auburn State Prison opened in 1816, prisoners were forced to do unpaid work in several for-profit industries: making furniture or manufacturing carpets, combs, carriage lamps, or animal harnesses. Harvard history professor Robin Bernstein calls it “penal capitalism,” and her riveting book, Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder that Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit, tells the story of inmate William Freeman, a free-born Black teenager who was incarcerated from 1840-1845 for stealing a horse, a crime he denied.
From the start, Freeman bristled at having to labor without pay and opposed the prison’s nighttime solitary confinement, enforced silence, beatings, and water torture for worksite infractions. His resistance escalated after a guard battered Freeman so severely that his eardrum shattered and his temporal bone was damaged. This left him deaf and intellectually impaired – but still so enraged that he sued the prison for unlawful imprisonment and back wages after he was released. The lawsuit failed. Likewise, his attempts to find gainful employment.
Frustrated, Freeman began collecting weapons and in March 1846, he entered the home of George and Mary Van Nest, white people he barely knew, and killed both adults and a child. He then went to another home and killed again. Although Freeman subsequently tried to escape, he was quickly apprehended.
Freeman’s trial pitted those who favored execution against those who favored life imprisonment and prompted a slew of racially charged arguments about Black moral depravity and inferiority. Moreover, whether Freeman was insane, inherently criminal, or a victim of anti-Black prejudice took center stage. Freeman never testified. Although he was sentenced to hang, he died of tubercular phthisis at age 22.
Bernstein masterfully transports contemporary readers to the 19th century and details how popular culture sensationalized the murders and trial. She also depicts the city of Auburn’s development and charts the benefits of the prison economy for local townspeople.
Two hundred-plus years later, prisons continue to benefit. Auburn is now the oldest continually operating maximum-security prison in the US; today’s inmates earn just 65 cents per hour for their labor.
Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder that Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit by Robin Bernstein. University of Chicago Press, May 2024.
Reviewer bio: Eleanor J. Bader is a Brooklyn, NY-based journalist who writes about books and domestic social issues for Truthout, Rain Taxi, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Indypendent.