Includes bibliographical references (pages 179-196) and index.
Contents
Orphans, bastards, and free black children : antebellum and colonial North Carolina apprenticeship -- "Justly entitled" to apprentices : race and labor in Reconstruction -- Free-labor ideology, apprenticeship, and the Freedmen's Bureau : discontinuities in law and practice -- Reconstructing "free woman" : African American mothers and apprenticeship -- Parents' rights or children's best interests? : the role of judicial discretion in apprenticeship and child custody -- "The day of apprenticeship is past" : the demise of apprenticeship and the triumph of child welfare.