In 2020, the United States faced a cultural reckoning as the world stared down the start of a global pandemic. During a time of strife and death, a time that disproportionately affected people of color, the world watched along as continued police brutality reached a point that that triggered protests around the world. At the Journal of Modern Slavery we mourned and felt anger with those around us, and then we wondered what we could do, how we could actively support the movement for racial justice. The answer came in the form of a special issue of the Journal of Modern Slavery, designed to look deeper into the individual, social, and systemic injustices woven into the fabric of the United States, beginning with slavery. The issue of the journal grew into this book.

In Slavery and its Consequences: Racism, Inequity and Exclusion in the USA, the contributors tell rich narratives about how slavery and racial injustice, as well as the resistance to it, has shaped the country over centuries to become what modern America is today. Through various lenses, the book explores and celebrates Black American history as it is woven into the cultural and social structures of the country. Across centuries of change, this book weaves together the invaluable influence this history has had on music, sport, philosophy, literature, publishing, scholarship, politics, faiths, poetry, the church, photography, civil rights, peacebuilding, jazz and more as part of the struggle and the resistance.