The Plunder of Black America: How the Racial Wealth Gap Was Made

by Calvin Schermerhorn

The long history of the racial wealth gap in America told through the stories of seven Black families who struggled to build wealth over multiple generations
 
Wealth is central to the American pursuit of happiness and is an overriding measure of well-being. Yet wealth is conspicuously absent from African American households. Why do some 3.5 million Black American families have zero or negative wealth?
 
Historian Calvin Schermerhorn traces four hundred years of Black dispossession and decapitalization—what Frederick Douglass called plunder—through the stories of families who have strived to earn and keep the fruits of their toils. Their struggles reveal that the ever-evolving strategies to strip Black income and wealth have been critical to sustaining a structure of racialized disadvantage. These accounts also tell of the quiet heroism of those who worked to overcome obstacles and defy the plunder.
 
From the story of Anthony and Mary Johnson, abducted from Angola and brought to Virginia in 1619, to the enslaved Black workers dispossessed by the Custis-Washington family, to Venture Smith (born Broteer Furro), who purchased his freedom, to three generations of a family enslaved in the South who moved north after Emancipation, to the Tulsa massacre and the subprime lending crisis, Schermerhorn shows that we cannot reckon with today’s racial wealth inequality without understanding its unrelenting role in American history.

Genres: Nonfiction

304 pages, Hardcover

Published February 11, 2025

About the author

Calvin Schermerhorn grew up in Southern Maryland on a landscape in which slavery was hidden. Now a historian and professor at Arizona State University researching African American inequality and U.S. slavery, he works to bring to light that troubled history.

Reviews

[Esme · Rating 5 out of 5]

This deserves to be read more. Seriously, I don't know why it's so criminally under read. It's well researched, well told, and it holds a special place for me because it focuses a little bit on the very area I grew up -- Chesapeake Md/Va area.

I absolutely highly recommend reading this. It's accessible for those who don't have much background in the era.

[Josie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most important and gut wrenching books I have read. It was hard at times to read how inequitable the economic opportunities have been for Black Americans. Having grown up in SC, I was angry at myself for not understanding the systemic suppression of the Black population. Truly disgusting. As a new resident of Phoenix, I appreciated the chapter on the racist policies and history of one of the newer US cities. The conclusion was excellent and offered many options for remedying the past wrongs. The current deplorable administration will add to the income gap, but I can hope that the next administration will work to improve the advancement of Black Americans through education, housing, and Civil Rights legislation.

[Lashawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Plunder of Black America is powerful, painful, and essential. Calvin Schermerhorn traces the racial wealth gap from slavery to modern housing and financial systems, showing how progress for Black families was met again and again with deliberate plunder.

It’s not a story of failure — it’s a story of resilience, endurance, and truth-telling. Every page reminds you that the wealth gap wasn’t born of chance, but of choice.

💭 History lives in the present — and this book makes you see it clearly.