Justene Hill Edwards is a historian of the African American experience, with specific interests in the history of slavery and the evolution of Black economic life in America.  An Andrew Carnegie Fellow and Mellon New Directions Fellow, she is the author of two books, Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank (2024, W.W. Norton) and Unfree Markets: The Slaves’ Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina (2021, Columbia University Press).