The Lowest Freedom: Racial Capitalism and Black Thought in the Nineteenth Century

Author:   Justin Leroy
Publisher:   Columbia University Press
ISBN:  

9780231223560


Pages:   272
Publication Date:   21 April 2026
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Awaiting stock   Availability explained
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The Lowest Freedom: Racial Capitalism and Black Thought in the Nineteenth Century


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Author:   Justin Leroy
Publisher:   Columbia University Press
Imprint:   Columbia University Press
ISBN:  

9780231223560


ISBN 10:   0231223560
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   21 April 2026
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Awaiting stock   Availability explained
The supplier is currently out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out for you.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Freedom’s Dregs: Blackness, Indigeneity, and Racial Capitalism in Antebellum New England 2. The Radical Abolishment of Slavery: Abolitionist Encounters with Land and Labor Reformers 3. A Worse Condition Than in the Time of Slavery: Capital, Labor, and the Limits of Emancipation 4. Abolitionism Is Another Term for Communism: Abolition Democracy Against Racial Capitalism Epilogue: Unending Histories Notes Bibliography Index

Reviews

Through its unique excavations of the Black radical tradition’s critiques of U.S. freedom, The Lowest Freedom provides a radical rethinking of Black freedom and racial capitalism in the nineteenth century United States. -- Zach Sell, author of <i>Trouble of the World: Slavery and Empire in the Age of Capital</i>


Justin Leroy has produced an indispensable and dazzling book that will forever change our understanding of modern intellectual history. He reintroduces us to nineteenth-century Black thinkers whose incisive critique of the political economy of slavery and capitalism rivals that of the leading economists of their times, and ours. Indeed, they anticipated by two centuries the question we are asking ourselves today: is genuine abolition possible under racial capitalism? For the answer, read this book. -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of <i>Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination</i> Justin Leroy's The Lowest Freedom is a landmark book in both the historical literature on the nineteenth-century United States and thinking about racial capitalism more generally. The next generation of scholars and perhaps even the next generation after that will use it as a trailhead and a point from which to orient their own work. -- Walter Johnson, author of <i>The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States</i> Through its unique excavations of the Black radical tradition’s critiques of US freedom, The Lowest Freedom provides a radical rethinking of Black freedom and racial capitalism in the nineteenth-century United States. -- Zach Sell, author of <i>Trouble of the World: Slavery and Empire in the Age of Capital</i>


Through its unique excavations of the Black radical tradition’s critiques of U.S. freedom, The Lowest Freedom provides a radical rethinking of Black freedom and racial capitalism in the nineteenth century United States. -- Zach Sell, author of <i>Trouble of the World: Slavery and Empire in the Age of Capital</i> Justin Leroy has produced an indispensable and dazzling book that will forever change our understanding of modern intellectual history. He reintroduces us to nineteenth century Black thinkers whose incisive critique of the political economy of slavery and capitalism rivals that of the leading economists of their times, and ours. Indeed, they anticipated by two centuries the question we are asking ourselves today: is genuine abolition possible under racial capitalism? For the answer, read this book. -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of <i>Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination</i>


Justin Leroy has produced an indispensable and dazzling book that will forever change our understanding of modern intellectual history. He reintroduces us to nineteenth-century Black thinkers whose incisive critique of the political economy of slavery and capitalism rivals that of the leading economists of their times—and ours. Indeed, they anticipated by two centuries the question we are asking ourselves today: Is genuine abolition possible under racial capitalism? For the answer, read this book. -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of <i>Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination</i> Justin Leroy's The Lowest Freedom is a landmark book in both the historical literature on the nineteenth-century United States and thinking about racial capitalism more generally. The next generation of scholars and perhaps even the next generation after that will use it as a trailhead and a point from which to orient their own work. -- Walter Johnson, author of <i>The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States</i> Through its unique excavations of the Black radical tradition’s critiques of US freedom, The Lowest Freedom provides a radical rethinking of Black freedom and racial capitalism in the nineteenth-century United States. -- Zach Sell, author of <i>Trouble of the World: Slavery and Empire in the Age of Capital</i>


Author Information

Justin Leroy is assistant professor of history at Duke University. He is coeditor of Histories of Racial Capitalism (Columbia, 2021).

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