The son of Louis and Sylvia Berlin from Bessarabia. Stretching over five de- cades, Berlin's scholarship transformed understandings of African American histo- ry and made struggles over slavery and freedom central to North American histo- ry. Known for his generous and spirited camaraderie with faculty, staff, and students alike, Berlin made an inestimable impact through his scholarship and teaching and in service to his profession and university. He attended the University of Wisconsin, receiving a BA in chemistry (1963), then a PhD in history (1970). His dissertation became his first book, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (1974). It articulated themes that would remain central to his work: that African American history differed greatly de- pending on geography and economic status, and that understandings - and experien- ces-of freedom and slavery changed over time. In the early 1970s, he taught at Federal City College in Washington, DC (wherehis colleagues included CL.. R. James), before taking an appointment at the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1974. In 1976, Berlin founded the Freedmen and Southern Society Project, serving as its director until 1991. That project has analyzed, annotated, and published thousands of primary documents that profoundly reshaped interpretations of African American history during the Civil War and early Reconstruction.