Justene Hill Edwards is an associate professor of history at the University of Virginia. She is an expert in African American history, with a particular focus on the history of slavery and the evolution of Black economic life in America. She is the author of Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank (W.W. Norton, 2024) and Unfree Markets: The Slaves’ Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina (Columbia University Press, 2021). Her next book, Inequality in America: A Concise History (W.W. Norton), considers how inequality has shaped American life, from the colonial era to the present. Justene is a frequent public speaker on topics including African American history, the history of American slavery, racial capitalism, and the history of economic inequality in America. She has won a variety of awards and fellowships, most recently the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship and the Mellon New Directions Fellowship. Justene serves on the editorial boards of the University of Virginia Press, Enterprise & Society: The International Journal of Business History, and The Journal of the Civil War Era. She is on the advisory boards of the Nau Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia and the Program in Early American Economy & Society at the Library Company of Philadelphia. In addition, Justene is a former trustee of the Business History Conference and a current trustee of the Midland School. She received a B.A. in Spanish from Swarthmore College, an M.A. in African New World Studies from Florida International University, and a Ph.D. in History from Princeton University.
TOPICS: Race, History, Economics