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Author
Language
English
Description
Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives, Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation. After his rescue, Northup published...
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English
Description
Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1857, when the region is a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces. When John Brown, the legendary abolitionist, arrives in the area, an argument between Brown and Henry's master quickly turns violent. Henry is forced to leave town - with Brown, who believes he's a girl.
Over the ensuing months, Henry - whom Brown nicknames Little Onion - conceals his true identity as...
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English
Description
A compilation, selected from various sources and arranged chronologically, of the reminiscences of slaves and ex-slaves about their experiences from the leaving of Africa through the Civil War and into the early twentieth century. Paired with historical commentary and powerful paintings, Julius Lester's book presents what it felt like to be a slave in America through the words of black men and women who lived it rather than filtering through the eyes...
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English
Description
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Their first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway,...
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English
Description
The day nine-year-old Grace is called to work in the kitchen in the Big House, everyone warns her to to keep her head down and her thoughts to herself, but the more she sees of the oppressive Master and his hateful wife, the more she questions things until one day her thoughts escape--and to avoid being separated she and her family flee into the Dismal Swamp, to join the other escaped slaves who live there.
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English
Description
Frederick Douglass was born a slave and ended up becoming one of the most famous abolitionists of his time. This inspiring biography teaches readers about Douglass' incredible life. Through captivating images and illustrations and engaging sidebars and facts, readers will learn about the Thirteenth Amendment, the Underground Railroad, and the Emancipation Proclamation as well as people that had major impacts on Douglass' freedom and life, such as...
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English
Description
In 1863, a young Black woman who embroiders intricate maps on repurposed cloth to help enslaved men flee and join the Union Army crosses paths with a Jewish seamstress who helps her discover that even the most delicate threads have the capacity to save.
1863. In New Orleans Stella, an ingenious young Black woman, embroiders intricate maps on repurposed cloth to help enslaved men flee and join the Union Army. Bound to a man who would kill her if he...
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Series
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English
Description
In 1854 in Eastern Maryland twelve-year-old Ann is a slave, grateful that her family is still all together; but when their master, in need of money, decides to sell Ann and her younger brother, their parents decide to take the dangerous step of running away north to freedom--a journey filled with danger, especially since they are not sure how to find the first station on the Underground Railroad.
Author
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English
Description
This program includes a bonus conversation with the author and is read by acclaimed narrator Bahni Turpin, whose voice listeners will recognize from The Hate U Give, Children of Blood and Bone, and The Underground Railroad.
From author Sarah Bird comes the compelling, hidden story of Cathy Williams, a former slave and the only woman to ever serve with the legendary Buffalo Soldiers.
"Here's the first thing you need to know about Miss Cathy Williams:...
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
Presents the remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled white man and William posing as "his" slave.
In December 1848, a young enslaved couple named Ellen and William Craft traveled openly by rail, coach and steamship from Macon, Georgia, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Ellen, who passed for white, disguised herself as a wealthy disabled...
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English
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A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Betty DeRamus is an award-winning journalist who rummaged through musty records and forgotten memoirs to resurrect this book's unsung heroes. Despite the risks, some American slaves partook of the "forbidden fruit" of marriage. And when the dreaded separation inevitably occurred, slave spouses grieved deeply and sometimes made Herculean efforts to re-unite. DeRamus recounts the tales of soulmates who braved bloodhounds,...
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English
Description
The author, Shyima Hall, was eight when her parents sold her into slavery. In Egypt's capitol city of Cairo, she lived with a wealthy family and serve them eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. When she was ten, her captors moved to Orange County, California, and smuggled Shyima with them. Two years later, an anonymous call from a neighbor brought about the end of Shyima's servitude-- but her journey to true freedom was far from over. Now a US...
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"Winter 1838--Kentucky. Determined to save her toddler son from being sold as a slave, the woman who became known as Eliza Harris trekked through the forest, in the dark of night with wild animals on her heels. Her goal: cross the Ohio River, the boundary between the North and the South, between slavery and freedom. Although the journey would be perilous, Eliza looked out at the treacherous frozen waters and quickly decided she couldn't let fear stop...
17) Yonder: a novel
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English
Description
"The Water Dancer meets The Prophets in this spare, gripping, and beautifully rendered novel exploring love and friendship among a group of enslaved Black strivers in the mid-nineteenth century"--
They call themselves the Stolen. Their owners call them captives. They are taught their captors’ tongues and their beliefs but they have a language and rituals all their own. In a world that would be allegorical if it weren’t saturated in...
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English
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"Aaron Burr was a hero of the Revolution, a brilliant politician, lawyer, and very nearly president; a skillful survivor in a raw new country filled with constantly shifting loyalties. But there were dark whispers about him: that he was untrustworthy, a libertine, a man unafraid of claiming whatever he believed should be his. Sold into slavery as a child in India, Mary Emmons was brought to an America torn by war. Toughened by the experiences of her...
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English
Description
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner relates the dramatic story of fugitive slaves and the antislavery activists who defied the law to help them reach freedom.
The dramatic story of fugitive slaves and the antislavery activists who defied the law to help them reach freedom.
More than any other scholar, Eric Foner has influenced our understanding of America's history. Now, making brilliant use of extraordinary evidence, the Pulitzer Prize–winning...
Author
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English
Description
Frederick Douglass was a self-educated slave in the South who grew up to become an icon. He was a leader of the abolitionist movement, a celebrated writer, an esteemed speaker, and a social reformer, proving that, as he said, "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."