Central Kansas Library System

The story follows Hetty "Handful" Grimke, a Charleston slave, and Sarah, the daughter of the wealthy Grimke family. The novel begins on Sarah's eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership over Handful, who is to be her handmaid, and follows the next thirty-five years of their lives. Inspired in part by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke (a feminist, suffragist and, importantly, an abolitionist), the author allows herself to go beyond the record...

Author's note -- Introduction -- Part I: Minty's story -- The alpha journey -- First generation American -- Lies but not misdemeanors -- Dear mama -- We are family -- Caretaker -- Flesh for rent -- Head trauma -- Innervisions -- The ultimate loss -- Say her name -- Hove and marriage -- The auction block -- She's out -- Part II: She ain't sorry -- The conductor -- Betrayal -- Expats -- Who your gonna call? -- She came to slay -- Fearless -- Antislavery...

A town at the center of the United States becomes the site of an ongoing struggle for freedom and equality. In May, 1854, Massachusetts was in an uproar. A judge, bound by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, had just ordered a young African American man who had escaped from slavery in Virginia and settled in Boston to be returned to bondage in the South. An estimated fifty thousand citizens rioted in protest. Observing the scene was Amos Adams Lawrence,...

"The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African-American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era. As a young man Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major...