The Long Afterlife of Slavery in Asset Stripping, Historical Memory, and Family Burden: Toward a Third Reconstruction

Abstract

For African Americans in particular, the question of financial capability and asset building is as old as Black freedom. Through conceptual frames such as racial capitalism, historical memory, and the family stress model, this article examines the many false starts since Reconstruction in which expectations were raised, but then hopes subsequently dashed when reality produced outcomes that kept tangible economic progress just out of reach of Black families.