Soul Value

Professor Berry’s lecture presented her book, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh, where she discussed value of slaves throughout different parts of their lives and added a perception of value from slaves’ perspectives. Berry presented to an assortment of students and fans of her work to promote her book and discuss its contents in an informal academic setting. During her lecture, Berry focused on the commodification of deceased slaves and slaves’ ability to access ‘soul value’, or ability to recognize inner worth which couldn’t be valued like money. Because slaves could understand soul value, Dr. Berry expresses that black slaves could take ownership of their own lives and survive slavery. This allowed slaves to mentally free themselves although they may be confined to physical slavery throughout their entire lives and even after death. Dr. Berry’s Lecture centered around the sale of dead slaves, which she understood more deeply by analyzing the value of dead slaves and their uses after death. Berry discussed how many slaves were …show more content…
Berry added a voice to slave narratives indicating how slaves valued themselves, and if they understood their own commodification by including real names and stories of the enslaved. Berry highlighted this by introducing the concept of ‘soul value’, which is a value on slaves which “cannot be commodified” (Dr. Berry). Berry explained soul value as the basis for a slave’s ability to measure his own self-worth, and was the reason why many slaves disrupted their own auctions, attempted to free themselves, or even committed suicide. Dr. Berry’s soul value concept revolves around slaves’ abilities to take control of their lives, despite servitude. This provided an interesting vantage for me to see slaves beyond the context of property and built upon class readings because it demonstrated how slaves constantly attempted to find justice for themselves and thrived despite their