Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (1974) is a book by the economists Robert Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. Asserting that slavery was an economically viable institution that had some benefits for African Americans, the book was reprinted in 1995 at its twentieth anniversary. First published a decade after the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, the book contradicted contemporary assessments of the effects of slavery on African Americans in the American South before the Civil War. It attracted widespread attention in the media and generated heated controversy and criticism for its methodology and conclusions.
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Phillip W. Magness is a Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research and holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Mason University. He is the author of numerous works on economic history, taxation, economic inequality, the history of slavery, and education policy in the United States. He is the author of Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement. You can follow him on Twitter at: @PhilWMagness.