Wealth Is Where History Shows Up in Your Wallet

Black Americans built much of this country’s wealth, and that’s true in a literal sense – before 1860, enslaved Africans physically built our nation’s cities, roads, railroads, and ports. Their free labor on cotton, sugar, and rice plantations made white landowners enormously wealthy. The exploitation did not stop after the Civil War. A century and a half later, a wealth gap persists between Black and white Americans. Learn more at this panel featuring Louise Story and Ebony Reed, the authors of Fifteen Cents on the Dollar, a new book following the lives of seven Black Americans at different economic levels, ages, and professions from 2020-23. – Brant Bingamon