Slavery, enslaved persons and abolition of slavery Books

Book SynopsisThe Transformation of the Abolitionist Movement from Peaceful Demonstration to Radical Confrontation as Embodied in John Brown Establishing himself as a fresh and important voice in the history of African American emancipation, William S. King provides a critical introduction to the lead-up to the Civil War. A skilled and judicious chronicler, King seamlessly weaves multiple and seemingly disparate threads, including early nineteenth-century Revivalism, the emergence of the Republic of Texas, the fugitive slave laws and even the explosion of a cannon aboard the U.S.S. Princeton in 1844 to explain how the opposition to slavery in America changed from producing speeches and pamphlets to embracing the reality that slavery could be eradicated only through armed conflict. By tracing this transformation through the life of John Brown, King provides an entirely new assessment of this enigmatic figure who was characterized as a mad man in the wake of his butchering of proslavery settlers in Kansas and the inept raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. King puts these actions in context to explain the paradox of Brown s legacy. On one hand he was vilified as an unstable threat to American democracy or a fanatical sideshow to the history of the Civil War, while on the other he was an inspiration to the oppressed, a man who garnered the indomitable Harriet Tubman s commitment to the righteousness of his endeavor. Elegantly written with a command of period sources, "Till the Dark Angel Comes: Abolitionism and the Road to the Second American Revolution" is the story of interracial opposition to slavery, the important debates among free blacks as to their future in America, and the arguments and compromises at the highest levels of government. Here we encounter many personalities of the time, some well known, such as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and John C. Calhoun, and others less so, but no less important Martin Delany, Henry Highland Garnet, and Elijah Lovejoy."

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe New York City Slave Revolt of 1712. The First Comprehensive Investigation into the First Uprising Against Slavery in North America.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisA survey and interpretive study of one of the defining issues in America's past Americans have vigorously debated and interpreted the role of slavery in American life for as long as enslaved people and their descendants have lived in North America. Contemporaries and later writers and scholars up to the present day have explored the meaning of slavery as a system of labor, an ideological paradox in a "free" political and social order, a violent mode of racial exploitation, and a global system of human commodification and trafficking.To fully understand the various ways in which slavery has been depicted and described is a difficult task. Like any other important historical issue, this requires a thorough grasp of the underlying history, methodological developments over time, and the contemporary politics and culture of historians' own times. And the case of slavery is further complicated, of course, by changes in the legal and political status of African Americans in the 20th and 21st centuries.Slavery: Interpreting American History, like other volumes in the Interpreting American History series, surveys interpretations of important historical eras and events, examining both the intellectual shifts that have taken place and various catalysts that drove those shifts. While the depth of Americans' historiographical engagement with slavery is not surprising given the turbulent history of race in America, the range and sheer volume of writing on the subject, spanning more than two centuries, can be overwhelming. Editors Aaron Astor and Thomas Buchanan, together with a team of expert contributors, highlight here the key debates and conceptual shifts that have defined the field. The volume will be an especially helpful guide for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, professional historians new to the field, and other readers interested in the study of American slavery.Trade Review"Writing interesting and engaging historiographical surveys of a topic such as slavery is difficult. Yet, this volume succeeds. In its prose and content, Slavery: Interpreting American History will appeal to both specialists and nonspecialists alike."—Hilary Green, author of Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South, 1865–1890"Slavery: Interpreting American History is more than a collection of exceptional essays on the historiography of American slavery. The essays connect to and enhance major interpretations in the field. Both seasoned scholars and those new to the topic will find great value in this book."—Justin Behrend, author of Reconstructing Democracy: Grassroots Black Politics in the Deep South after the Civil War

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe story of one Ohio senator's impact on the early abolition movement More than 175 years after his death, Senator Thomas Morris has remained one of the few early national champions of political and constitutional antislavery without a biography devoted to him. In this first expansive study of Morris's life and contributions, David C. Crago persuasively argues that historians have wrongly marginalized Morris's role in the early antislavery movement.Morris was the first member of the US Senate to defend abolitionist positions in that body. Confronted with Southern demands for Congressional action to silence abolitionists and endorse slavery, he asserted that a proslavery interpretation of the Constitution was a distortion of the text. Instead, he argued, the Constitution neither identified people as property nor granted Congress the power to establish slavery in the territories or the District of Columbia. Although far outside the 1830s political consensus, Morris's ideas were quickly adopted by the nascent antislavery movement and became the cornerstone of antislavery political beliefs.Ultimately expelled from the Ohio Democratic Party and denied reelection to the Senate, within a decade his ideas would shape the core principles of both the Free-Soil and Republican Parties' platforms. The Creation of a Crusader fills an important gap in understanding the early American antislavery movement and sheds light on Morris's overlooked yet significant influence.Trade Review"David Crago's splendid biography of Thomas Morris is truly a major contribution to the history of American politics. In his time, Morris, a stalwart antislavery pioneer, loomed so large that many thought his reputation would be immortal. With imagination, unstinting research, and analytical clarity, Crago has written a rare life study that illuminates the entire antislavery political tradition."—Sean Wilentz, author of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln "This impressive study seeks to return Ohio senator Thomas Morris, who for a brief time became a central figure in political abolitionism, to his rightful place in the history of American antislavery." —Jonathan Earle, author of Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824–1854"With the determination of a detective and the craft of a historian, law professor David Crago restores antebellum Ohio senator Thomas Morris to the meteoric presence he had in his own time—a hard-money Jacksonian in 1836 who broke from his party, who became the first public figure to denominate and denounce the aggrandizing 'Slave Power,' who reversed himself to argue that the Constitution never sanctioned humans as property, and who by 1842, as the vice presidential candidate of the Liberty Party, declared that Congress had the power and the obligation to abolish slavery to achieve the Declaration's equal justice for all."—Sydney Nathans, author of To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhen residents and tourists visit sites of slavery, whose stories are told? All too often the lives of slaveowners are centered, obscuring the lives of enslaved people. Behind the Big House gives readers a candid, behind-the-scenes look at what it really takes to interpret the difficult history of slavery in the U.S. South. The book explores Jodi Skipper’s eight-year collaboration with the Behind the Big House program, a community-based model used at local historic sites to address slavery in the collective narrative of U.S. history and culture. In laying out her experiences through an autoethnographic approach, Skipper seeks to help other activist scholars of color negotiate the nuances of place, the academic public sphere, and its ambiguous systems of reward, recognition, and evaluation. Table of Contents Foreword by Anne Valk and Teresa Mangum Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Thank You, Cousin Geneva! 2 Heritage Tourism in Mississippi 3 The Behind the Big House Program 4 Reconciling Race 5 Academic Values and Public Scholarship Epilogue What to Throw Away and What to Keep Appendix A Historic Site Evaluation Appendix B Small-Group Discussion Questions Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe clearly and concisely written entries in this reference work chronicle the campaign to end human slavery in the United States, bringing to life the key events, leading figures, and socioeconomic forces in the history of American antislavery, abolition, and emancipation. The struggle to abolish human slavery is one of the most important reform campaigns in history. The eventual success of this decades-long struggle serves as an inspiring example that even the most deeply rooted social wrongs can be corrected. This valuable reference work details the history of antislavery, abolition, and emancipation to illustrate the various forms of these forces and the courses they followed in the bitterly contested struggle against the institution of slavery, affording readers the most current compendium of the diverse scholarship of this important historical topic. Geared toward readers seeking to learn about antislavery and abolition in U.S. or African American history, Abolition and Antislavery: A Historical Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic addresses a period of particular significance: the years that shaped the sectional debates leading up to the Civil War. The coverage encompasses both white abolitionists such as Theodore Dwight Weld and William Lloyd Garrison and black abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Delaney, and Sojourner Truth. Each alphabetically organized entry contains cross-references as "See Also" at the end of each entry text. An introductory essay ensures that all readers have a clear framework for understanding the subject, regardless of their previous background knowledge.Trade ReviewA sound source for academic libraries, this might also see use in high schools, given the approachable prose. * Booklist *Table of ContentsList of Entries, List of Primary Documents, Preface, Introduction, Chronology, The Encyclopedia, Primary Documents, Selected Bibliography, Index, About the Editors,

Read more less

Book SynopsisFrom trusted to tainted, an examination of the shifting perceived reputation of slave overseers. In eighteenth-century North America, major slaveowners typically hired overseers to manage their plantations. In addition to cultivating crops, managing slaves, and dispensing punishment, overseers were expected to maximize profits through increased productivity—often achieved through violence and cruelty. In Masters of Violence, Tristan Stubbs offers the first book-length examination of eighteenth-century overseers—from recruitment and dismissal to their relationships with landowners and enslaved people, as well as their changing reputations, which devolved from reliable to untrustworthy and incompetent.At the beginning of the eighteenth century, slaveowners regarded overseers as reliable enforcers of authority; by the end of the century, particularly after the American Revolution, plantation owners viewed them as incompetent and morally degenerate, as well as a threat to their power. Through a careful reading of plantation records, diaries, contemporary newspaper articles, and many other sources, Stubbs uncovers the ideological shift responsible for tarnishing overseers’ reputations.In Masters of Violence, Stubbs argues that this shift in opinion grew out of far-reaching ideological and structural transformations to slave societies in Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia throughout the Revolutionary era. Seeking to portray their own actions as positive and yet simultaneously distance themselves from slavery, plantation owners blamed overseers as incompetent managers and vilified them as violent brutalizers of enslaved people.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe latest in the groundbreaking series of photobooks on LGBTQ life around the world, an intimate, personal collection of photographs on the queer community in the U.S.Recent years have seen an unprecedented push by state legislatures to pass anti-LGBTQ bills across the United States. Hundreds of laws, mainly attempting to ban access to gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth and to ban discussions of gender identity and sexuality from high school curriculums, have been introduced this year alone?a new and deeply troubling record.In these times visual representation of queer love is as important as it has ever been, and in Transcend, award-winning Taiwanese American photographer Sandra Chen Weinstein showcases some of the work from a long career of photographing the LGBTQ community, especially the trans community. Weinstein?s own child recently came out as queer, trans, and non-binary at the age of twenty-eight, and the core of the book is a series of photographs that focuses on their relationship.A gorgeously packaged, full-color book, Transcend challenges many assumptions about LGBTQ life in the United States and is an enduring visual testament to the strength, resilience, and joy of the queer community in the face of discrimination, inequality, and violence.Transcend was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).

Read more less

Book SynopsisWilliam Byrd II was a prominent eighteenth-century Virginian who at the time of his death owned over 180,000 acres and employed laborers and enslaved Africans to work his land. His letters, diaries, and surveying documents have become key texts in the study of American history, and he is one of the most quoted and discussed figures of his era. Byrd himself was perhaps the early colonial epitome of a patriarch, and typically, when historians examine Byrd and the prominence of patriarchal thought in colonial Virginia, they examine his relationships with his immediate family. In this book, however, Dennis Todd examines the patriarchal relations between Byrd and the workers on his plantations—his apprentices, his wageworkers, his overseers, his white servants, and especially his slaves. In doing so, this book illuminates a neglected stage in the formation of slavery in Virginia. Todd argues that patriarchal principles, which are often assumed to have justified slavery and to have offered a template for slave management, in fact did neither. Byrd was not the only Virginian to wrestle with the contradictions between patriarchal values and the realities of slavery, but few were as articulate. In examining Byrd through the twin lens of slavery and patriarchy, Patriarchy in Peril makes an important contribution to our understanding of the man and his place in Virginia society as well as the contentious formation of early America.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWilliam Hardin Burnley (1780-1850) was the largest slave owner in Trinidad during the nineteenth century. Born in the United States to English parents, he settled on the island in 1802 and became one of its most influential citizens and a prominent agent of the British Empire. A central figure among elite and moneyed transnational slave owners, Burnley moved easily through the Atlantic world of the Caribbean, the United States, Great Britain, and Europe, and counted among his friends Alexis de Tocqueville, British politician Joseph Hume, and prime minister William Gladstone.In this first full-length biography of Burnley, Selwyn R. Cudjoe chronicles the life of Trinidad's ""founding father"" and sketches the social and cultural milieu in which he lived. Reexamining the decades of transition from slavery to freedom through the lens of Burnley's life, The Slave Master of Trinidad demonstrates that the legacies of slavery persisted in the new post-emancipation society.

Read more less

Book SynopsisShortly after the first Europeans arrived in seventeenth-century New England, they began to import Africans and capture the area's indigenous peoples as slaves. By the eve of the American Revolution, enslaved people comprised only about 4 percent of the population, but slavery had become instrumental to the region's economy and had shaped its cultural traditions. This story of slavery in New England has been little told.In this concise yet comprehensive history, Jared Ross Hardesty focuses on the individual stories of enslaved people, bringing their experiences to life. He also explores larger issues such as the importance of slavery to the colonization of the region and to agriculture and industry, New England's deep connections to Caribbean plantation societies, and the significance of emancipation movements in the era of the American Revolution. Thoroughly researched and engagingly written, Black Lives, Native Lands, White Worlds is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of New England.

Read more less

Book SynopsisDespite efforts to abolish slavery throughout Africa in the nineteenth century, the coercive labor systems that constitute "modern slavery" have continued to the present day. To understand why, Robin Phylisia Chapdelaine explores child trafficking, pawning, and marriages in Nigeria's Bight of Biafra, and the ways in which British colonial authorities and Igbo, Ibibio, Efik, and Ijaw populations mobilized children's labor during the early twentieth century. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources that include oral interviews, British and Nigerian archival materials, newspaper holdings, and missionary and anthropological accounts, Chapdelaine argues that slavery's endurance can only be understood when we fully examine "the social economy of a child" -- the broader commercial, domestic, and reproductive contexts in which children are economic vehicles.The Persistence of Slavery provides an invaluable investigation into the origins of modern slavery and early efforts to combat it, locating this practice in the political, social, and economic changes that occurred as a result of British colonialism and its lingering effects, which perpetuate child trafficking in Nigeria today.Trade ReviewAn important, original contribution to the history of child trafficking in the twentieth century, the history of children globally, and to Nigerian and West African history, in general." —Benjamin N. Lawrance, editor in chief of African Studies Review and author of Amistad’s Orphans: An Atlantic Story of Children, Slavery, and Smuggling"One of the few book-length studies on the history of children in colonial Africa, The Persistence of Slavery is necessary and timely. It will be a first choice for courses on African history and childhood studies." —Saheed Aderinto, author of When Sex Threatened the State: Illicit Sexuality, Nationalism, and Politics in Colonial Nigeria, 1900–1958

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe image is terrible and familiar. A man sits, his face in profile, his torso exposed. His back is a breathtaking mass of scars, crisscrossing his body and baring the brutality of American slavery. Reproduced as a carte de visite, the image circulated widely throughout abolitionist networks and was featured in Harper's Weekly. Its undeniable power testified to the evils of slavery. But who was this man and how did this image come to be?Bruce Laurie uncovers the people and events that created this seminal image, telling the tale of three men, two Yankee soldiers from western Massachusetts who were serving the Union Army in Louisiana and a man named Peter whose scarred back horrified all who saw it. The two soldiers were so shocked by what had been done to Peter, they sought to capture the image and document slavery's cruelty, the likes of which was all too common among those fleeing bondage in Louisiana. Meticulously researched and briskly told, this short volume unearths the story behind an iconic image.

Read more less

Book SynopsisArguably our most obscure president, and generally judged mediocre at best, Millard Fillmore came to the presidency in July 1850 when his predecessor, Zachary Taylor, unexpectedly died. Despite his relative anonymity, Fillmore was thrust into the nation''s greatest historical argument the great debate concerning the future of slavery in the republic. With considerable political aplomb, he helped guide the passage of the measures collectively known as the Compromise of 1850, including the sensitive and controversial Fugitive Slave Act. Rather than resolve the agitation, these measures gave way to a decade of rancorous conflict which brought about the Civil War. This interpretative study seeks to understand why this president remained anchored to a past that was no longer effective in his own time.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIndependence Day, 1861. The schooner S. J. Waring sets sail from New York on a routine voyage to South America. Seventeen days later, it limps back into New York’s frenzied harbor with the ship's black steward, William Tillman, at the helm. While the story of that ill-fated voyage is one of the most harrowing tales of captivity and survival on the high seas, it has, almost unbelievably, been lost to history. Now reclaiming Tillman as the real American hero he was, historian Brian McGinty dramatically returns readers to that riotous, explosive summer of 1861, when the country was tearing apart at the seams and the Union army was in near shambles following a humiliating defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. Desperate for good news, the North was soon riveted by reports of an incident that occurred a few hundred miles off the coast of New York, where the Waring had been overtaken by a marauding crew of Confederate privateers. While the white sailors became chummy with their Southern captors, free black man William Tillman was perfectly aware of the fate that awaited him in the ruthless, slave-filled ports south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Stealthily biding his time until a moonlit night nine days after the capture, Tillman single-handedly killed three officers of the privateer crew, then took the wheel and pointed it home. Yet, with no experience as a navigator, only one other helper, and a war-torn Atlantic seaboard to contend with, his struggle had just begun. It took five perilous days at sea—all thrillingly recounted here—before the Waring returned to New York Harbor, where the story of Tillman's shipboard courage became such a tabloid sensation that he was not only put on the bill of Barnum’s American Museum but also proclaimed to be the "first hero" of the Civil War. As McGinty evocatively shows, however, in the horrors of the war then engulfing the nation, memories of his heroism—even of his identity—were all but lost to history. As such, The Rest I Will Kill becomes a thrilling and historically significant work, as well as an extraordinary journey that recounts how a free black man was able to defy efforts to make him a slave and become an unlikely glimmer of hope for a disheartened Union army in the war-battered North.Trade Review"Spectacular. . . . [A] carefully researched and expertly crafted book . . . . The Rest I Will Kill should enchant a wide audience: history buffs, Civil War enthusiasts, pirate junkies, readers who love action and adventure, and those interested in the seemingly unending quest for liberty. It’s difficult to imagine the person who can’t find something to admire in these pages" -- Michael Kleber-Diggs - Minneapolis Star Tribune"McGinty has uncovered another compelling, little-known gem of American history…[He] impressively recounts this extraordinary story of a remarkable man, the 'first real hero of the conflict.' Race, patriotism, and personal heroism come together in this eye-opening early episode in Civil War history." -- Kirkus Reviews"Vivid writing creates an exciting read, and McGinty’s use of primary sources such as newspapers and government documents is exceptional. . . . McGinty dubs Tillman a hero and a patriot, one of the first during the Civil War. An important contribution to the shelf of Civil War histories, this story will transfix readers." -- Patricia Ann Owens - Library Journal (Starred Review)

Read more less

Book SynopsisIndependence Day, 1861. The schooner S. J. Waring sets sail from New York on a routine voyage to South America. Seventeen days later, it limps back into New York’s frenzied harbor with the ship's black steward, William Tillman, at the helm. While the story of that ill-fated voyage is one of the most harrowing tales of captivity and survival on the high seas, it has, almost unbelievably, been lost to history. Now reclaiming Tillman as the real American hero he was, historian Brian McGinty dramatically returns readers to that riotous, explosive summer of 1861, when the country was tearing apart at the seams and the Union army was in near shambles following a humiliating defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. Desperate for good news, the North was soon riveted by reports of an incident that occurred a few hundred miles off the coast of New York, where the Waring had been overtaken by a marauding crew of Confederate privateers. While the white sailors became chummy with their Southern captors, free black man William Tillman was perfectly aware of the fate that awaited him in the ruthless, slave-filled ports south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Stealthily biding his time until a moonlit night nine days after the capture, Tillman single-handedly killed three officers of the privateer crew, then took the wheel and pointed it home. Yet, with no experience as a navigator, only one other helper, and a war-torn Atlantic seaboard to contend with, his struggle had just begun. It took five perilous days at sea—all thrillingly recounted here—before the Waring returned to New York Harbor, where the story of Tillman's shipboard courage became such a tabloid sensation that he was not only put on the bill of Barnum’s American Museum but also proclaimed to be the "first hero" of the Civil War. As McGinty evocatively shows, however, in the horrors of the war then engulfing the nation, memories of his heroism—even of his identity—were all but lost to history. As such, The Rest I Will Kill becomes a thrilling and historically significant work, as well as an extraordinary journey that recounts how a free black man was able to defy efforts to make him a slave and become an unlikely glimmer of hope for a disheartened Union army in the war-battered North.Trade Review"Spectacular. . . . [A] carefully researched and expertly crafted book . . . . The Rest I Will Kill should enchant a wide audience: history buffs, Civil War enthusiasts, pirate junkies, readers who love action and adventure, and those interested in the seemingly unending quest for liberty. It’s difficult to imagine the person who can’t find something to admire in these pages" -- Michael Kleber-Diggs - Minneapolis Star Tribune"Vivid writing creates an exciting read, and McGinty’s use of primary sources such as newspapers and government documents is exceptional. . . . McGinty dubs Tillman a hero and a patriot, one of the first during the Civil War. An important contribution to the shelf of Civil War histories, this story will transfix readers." -- Patricia Ann Owens - Library Journal (Starred Review)

Read more less

Book SynopsisFinalist for the Pulitzer Prize Widely hailed as a “powerfully written” history about America’s beginnings (Annette Gordon-Reed), New England Bound fundamentally changes the story of America’s seventeenth-century origins. Building on the works of giants like Bernard Bailyn and Edmund S. Morgan, Wendy Warren has not only “mastered that scholarship” but has now rendered it in “an original way, and deepened the story” (New York Times Book Review). While earlier histories of slavery largely confine themselves to the South, Warren’s “panoptical exploration” (Christian Science Monitor) links the growth of the northern colonies to the slave trade and examines the complicity of New England’s leading families, demonstrating how the region’s economy derived its vitality from the slave trading ships coursing through its ports. And even while New England Bound explains the way in which the Atlantic slave trade drove the colonization of New England, it also brings to light, in many cases for the first time ever, the lives of the thousands of reluctant Indian and African slaves who found themselves forced into the project of building that city on a hill. We encounter enslaved Africans working side jobs as con artists, enslaved Indians who protested their banishment to sugar islands, enslaved Africans who set fire to their owners’ homes and goods, and enslaved Africans who saved their owners’ lives. In Warren’s meticulous, compelling, and hard-won recovery of such forgotten lives, the true variety of chattel slavery in the Americas comes to light, and New England Bound becomes the new standard for understanding colonial America.Trade Review"Whereas most studies of slavery in the United States concern the antebellum South, this one stakes out less visited territory—the laws and decisions made by the colonists in New England two centuries earlier." -- The New Yorker"[Warren] builds on and generously acknowledges more than two generations of research into the social history of New England and the economic history of the Atlantic world. But not only has she mastered that scholarship, she has also brought it together in an original way, and deepened the story with fresh research…New England Bound conveys the disorientation, the deprivation, the vulnerability, the occasional hunger and the profound isolation that defined the life of most African exiles in Puritan New England, where there was no plantation community." -- Christopher L. Brown - New York Times Book Review"'Slavery was in England’s American colonies, even its New England colonies, from the very beginning,' explains Princeton historian Wendy Warren in her deeply thoughtful, elegantly written New England Bound....The greatest revelations of New England Bound lie in Warren’s meticulous reconstruction of slavery in colonial New England....Warren pores over the patchy archival record with a probing eye and an ear keen to silences." -- Maya Jasanoff - New York Review of Books"[Warren] widens the lens to show the early New England economy was enmeshed in the seafaring trade that developed between four Atlantic continents for the transport, clothing, and feeding of African captives. The region’s early growth and prosperity, Warren shows, sprang from that tainted commerce. . . . Southerners resentful of Northerners’ condescension about the slaveholding past may find some comfort in these pages. In them should be some Northern discomfort too." -- Kenneth J. Cooper - Boston Globe"Historians have written penetratingly on North American colonial racism and slavery—Edmund Morgan, Alden Vaughan, Ira Berlin, for starters—but New England Bound is a smart contribution to the New England story, a panoptical exploration of how slavery took root like a weed in the crack of a sidewalk. . . . What we have in this account is sharp explication of the ‘deadly symbiosis’ of colonization and slavery, written with a governed verve that perks like a coffee pot. It makes the New England story that much fuller, challenging, and more accountable." -- Peter Lewis - Christian Science Monitor"A bracing and fearless inquiry into the intricate web of slavery and empire into which all New Englanders were bound. Ardently argued, and urgently necessary." -- Jill Lepore, author of New York Burning"A beautifully written, humane and finely researched work that makes clear how closely intermingled varieties of slavery and New England colonization were from the very start. With great skill, Warren does full justice to the ideas of the individuals involved, as well as to the political and economic imperatives that drove some, and that trapped and gravely damaged others." -- Linda Colley, author of Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600-1850"Wendy Warren's deeply researched and powerfully written New England Bound opens up a new vista for the study of slavery and race in the United States. It will transform our thinking about seventeenth-century New England." -- Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello, winner of the Pulitzer Prize"New England Bound is a book of revelations. Not only does Wendy Warren cast startling new light on early America, not only does she uncover how racial slavery was woven into the fabric of New England from the very beginning, but she also shows how forgotten folk—people long thought lost to history—can be brought to light, and to life, if we look, and listen, for their stories. A remarkable achievement." -- James Merrell, author of Into the American Woods, winner of the Bancroft Prize"With intrepid research and stunning narrative skill, Wendy Warren demonstrates how much seventeenth-century New England societies were dependent on the West Indian slave trade, and especially on the labor, bodies, and lives of black slaves. Warren has turned the prophetic lessons of Ecclesiastes back upon the Puritan fathers with scholarly judgment, humanizing both them and the people they enslaved. This book is an original achievement, the kind of history that chastens our historical memory as it makes us wiser." -- David W. Blight, Yale University, author of Race and Reunion"In New England Bound, Wendy Warren builds a powerful case for the centrality of slavery to the economy of the Puritan colonies in the North." -- Joyce Appleby, author of The Relentless Revolution"A major contribution to the history of enslavement, of African Americans, of early New England society, and—most important—of the sinews and tissues at the center of the whole complex process we call 'colonization.' The research that supports it is ingenious, the argument compelling, the prose lucid and graceful." -- John Demos, author of The Heathen School

Read more less

Book SynopsisCommemorating the bicentennial of Frederick Douglass’s birthday and featuring images discovered since its original publication in 2015, this “tour de force” (Library Journal, starred review) reintroduced Frederick Douglass to a twenty-first-century audience. From these pages—which include over 160 photographs of Douglass, as well as his previously unpublished writings and speeches on visual aesthetics—we learn that neither Custer nor Twain, nor even Abraham Lincoln, was the most photographed American of the nineteenth century. Indeed, it was Frederick Douglass, the ex-slave-turned-abolitionist, eloquent orator, and seminal writer, who is canonized here as a leading pioneer in photography and a prescient theorist who believed in the explosive social power of what was then just an emerging art form. Featuring: Contributions from Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Kenneth B. Morris, Jr. (a direct Douglass descendent) 160 separate photographs of Douglass—many of which have never been publicly seen and were long lost to history A collection of contemporaneous artwork that shows how powerful Douglass’s photographic legacy remains today, over a century after his death All Douglass’s previously unpublished writings and speeches on visual aesthetics Trade Review"These images don’t change your mind; they smash through some of the warped lenses through which we’ve been taught to see." -- David Brooks - New York Times"Beautifully crafted and contextualized.... the extant photographs illuminate American history and memory." -- The Washington Post"A terrific new book." -- The New Yorker"Striking…. The most exciting images in the book are those that show us how these 19th-century portraits became, over the decades that follow, a part of the symbolic surround of the modern American landscape…. The words in this highly visual book are perhaps even more powerful than the images…. Pictures conveyed a precision akin to religious truth, an affective prerequisite for social movements." -- Matthew Pratt Guterl - The New Republic"Nothing less than a masterpiece in the fields of biography, African-American history, and not least of all the neglected area of iconography…A riveting instant classic and a pure pleasure to behold." -- Harold Holzer, winner of the Lincoln Prize and author of Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion"Picturing Frederick Douglass marries all of my present interests: legacies of slavery; beautiful images of a beautiful man; and the first theory of photography as a democratic medium capable of social change. Stunningly original and elegantly written and designed, it will inspire anyone interested in the links between the visual and the verbal." -- Sally Mann, author of Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs"Douglass emerges here out of photographic technology's earliest years, with majestic beauty, and through the power of his own self-creations. The book is the result of intrepid research and brilliant analysis; it charts Douglass's life visually, allowing him to look back at us wryly, wistfully, wrathfully." -- David W. Blight, Yale University, and author of Frederick Douglass: A Life"In Picturing Frederick Douglass, Stauffer, Trodd, and Bernier offer exhilarating scholarship and our idea of Douglass and our sense of photography in nineteenth-century America are deepened. This is brilliant and very moving work." -- Darryl Pinckney, author of High Cotton, Out There and Black Balled: The Black Vote and U.S. Democracy"Picturing Frederick Douglass marks a significant turn in the long history of Douglass’s reception. Both as a subject for photography and as a critical theorist who reflected on the democratic, humane, and truth-telling powers of the medium, Douglass emerges in this beautiful volume in a completely new light." -- W. J. T. Mitchell, author of Seeing Through Race"Picturing Frederick Douglass is to be shared, studied, read and repeated every six months, not only in the classroom but in our living rooms…Beautifully researched and storied…A true treasure!" -- Deborah Willis, author of Reflections in Black and the acclaimed documentary, Through a Lens Darkly"This stunning volume presents 160 photographs, some for the first time, and they not only follow Douglass throughout his life but also place him within the times he lived…. Stauffer, Zoe Trodd, and Celeste-Marie Bernier point out that Douglass saw the truth-telling aspects of photography and how it could be used as a tool in the fight against slavery, as photos both humanized African Americans and revealed the horrors of their enslavement. This tour de force is a must-have that will enhance history and reference collections." -- Patricia Ann Owens - Library Journal, Starred review"This illustrious book collects all 160 photographs of renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass and astutely places Douglass’s personal interest in photography into the context of his career and legacy…. This study provides a multifaceted, unique look at one of the most influential figures of American history." -- Publishers Weekly"An impressive collection…give[s] a wonderful picture of the man, his intellect, and his devotion to his main cause, abolition…. The authors have pieced together an illuminating life portrait without extraneous biographical material, focusing intensely on their subject's belief in the strength of photographs." -- Kirkus Reviews

Read more less

Book SynopsisAfter hiding in her grandmother’s attic for seven years, Harriet Ann Jacobs was finally able to escape servitude—and her master’s sexual abuse—when she fled to the North. Once there, she became a very active abolitionist, and her correspondence with Harriet Beecher Stowe inspired her to write Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl about her years as a slave.She published the narrative in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, and the book was written as a novel with fictionalized characters to protect Jacobs from retribution by her former owners. (Dr. Flint, i.e., the real Dr. James Norcom, is Linda Brent’s master in the novel.) The story emphasized certain negative aspects of slavery—especially the struggles of female slaves under sexually abusive masters, cruel mistresses, and the sale of their children—in order to play on the sympathies of white middle-class women in the North.Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was published at the beginning of the American Civil War. It contributed to the Union’s and abolitionists’ war effort, but is today seen as an important first-hand account from an escaped slave woman and an important abolitionist. After the Civil War, Jacobs continued to support the African-American cause, particularly education, until her death in 1897.Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWritten by a clinical and forensic psychologist, Marse: A Psychological Portrait of the American Southern White Elite Slave Master and His Endurig Impact focuses on the white men who composed the southern planter class. The book is a psychological autopsy of the mind and slaveholding behavior that helps explain the enduring roots of white supremacy and the hidden wound of racist slavery that continues to affect all Americans today.Marse details and illuminates examples of the psychological mechanisms by which southern slave masters justified owning another human being as property and how they formed a society in which it was morally acceptable. Kirkpatrick uses forensic psychology to analyze the personality formation, defense mechanisms, and psychopathologies of slave masters. Their delusional beliefs and assumptions about black Africans extended to a forceful cohort of white slaveholding women, and they twisted Christianity to promote slavery as a positive good. He examines the masters’ stress and fears, and how they developed psychologically fatal, slavery-specific defense mechanisms to cope. Through sources such as diaries, letters, autobiographies, and sermons, Marse describes the ways in which slaveholders created a delusional worldview that sanctioned cruel instruments of punishment, and the laws and social policies of domination used to rob Blacks of their human rights. In light of the seismic shift in race relations our nation is experiencing right now, this book is timely because it will advance our understanding of the South’s self-defeating romance with racist slavery and its latent and chronic effects. The parallels between the psychology of antebellum slaveholding and today’s racism are palpable.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA riveting and illuminating exploration of the transatlantic slave trade by an intrepid team of divers seeking to reclaim the stories of their ancestors. From the writers behind the acclaimed documentary series Enslaved (starring Samuel L. Jackson), comes a rich and revealing narrative of the true global and human scope of the transatlantic slave trade. The trade existed for 400 years, during which 12 million people were trafficked, and 2 million would die en route.In these pages we meet the remarkable group, Diving with a Purpose (DWP), as they dive sunken slave ships all around the world. They search for remains and artifacts testifying to the millions of kidnapped Africans that were transported to Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean. From manilla bracelets to shackles, cargo, and other possessions, the finds from these wrecks bring the stories of lost lives back to the surface.As we follow the men and women of DWP across eleven countries, Jacobovici and Kingsley’s rich research puts the archaeology and history of these wrecks that lost between 1670 to 1858 in vivid context. From the ports of Gold Coast Africa, to the corporate hubs of trading companies of England, Portugal and the Netherlands, and the final destinations in the New World, Jacobovici and Kingsley show how the slave trade touched every nation and every society on earth. Though global in scope, Enslaved makes history personal as we experience the divers’ sadness, anger, reverence, and awe as they hold tangible pieces of their ancestors’ world in their hands. What those people suffered on board those ships can never be forgiven. Enslaved works to ensure that it will always be remembered and understood, and is the first book to tell the story of the transatlantic slave trade from the bottom of the sea.Trade Review“A very important book. Through shipwrecks and the investigations of a small group of underwater explorers, Jacobovici and Kingsley tell the story of slavery in monstrous, unflinching detail. It's a story that needs to be told and Jacobovici (a brilliant storyteller) and Kingsley (a master maritime archaeologist) give it to us point-blank. It's more than a book; it's a message never to be forgotten.” -- Mensun Bound, director of exploration for the Endurance22 expedition, and author of The Ship Beneath the Ice: The Discovery of Shackleton's Endurance“A very important book. Through shipwrecks and the investigations of a small group of underwater explorers, Jacobovici and Kingsley tell the story of slavery in monstrous, unflinching detail. It's a story that needs to be told and Jacobovici (a brilliant storyteller) and Kingsley (a m -- Mensun Bound, director of exploration for the Endurance22 expedition, and author of The Ship Beneath the Ice: The Discovery of Shackleton's Endurance“Enslaved vividly explores these disturbing sunken archeological archives.” * Nature *“For me, Enslaved is an attempt to give a voice to the millions whose voices were silenced.” -- Samuel L. Jackson, human rights activist and Hollywood icon“A vast history has been submerged on the ocean floor for centuries. With Diving With A Purpose, Kingsley and Jacobovici share the stories of these people once viewed as cargo so that they will live on with dignity. Enslaved explores the global impact of slavery by investigating the ships carrying those that were enslaved as well as by digging into the history of port towns and the complexity of the illegal slave trade. A necessary, poignant work.” * Booklist *“An informative account. Enslaved spotlights Diving with a Purpose, a group of scuba divers who located the Leusden, a Dutch slaver whose 1738 sinking off the coast of Suriname killed 664 enslaved Africans, and the schooner Home, an Underground Railroad “freedom boat” that sank in Lake Michigan in 1858, among other wrecks. The authors present a wealth of information and effectively commemorate the two million captured Africans who died en route to Europe and the New World. Readers will be horrified and enlightened.” * Publishers Weekly *"Enslaved illuminates the horrors of slavery in a compelling new way. Built around the recovery of slavery's material artifacts, this book offers powerful reminders of our proximity to the past, of the scars slavery has left on our present, and of the struggles of oppressed people seeking to build new futures." -- Christopher Bonner, author of Remaking the Republic: Black Politics and the Creation of American Citizenship“The spirt and souls of the enslaved peoples buried on the ocean floor and in other unlikely graveyards have not been silenced forever. This book enables descendants of enslaved Africans to better understand who they are and where they have come from.” -- Dr. Wilhelmina J. Donkoh, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, GhanaPraise for Simcha Jacobovici: "Absolutely fascinating. Many would argue the biggest story or one of the biggest stories of our lifetime.” * NBC's TODAY *"Jacobovici is a maverick, a self-made Indiana Jones." * Newsweek *

Read more less

Book SynopsisA riveting and illuminating exploration of the transatlantic slave trade by an intrepid team of divers seeking to reclaim the stories of their ancestors. “For me, Enslaved is an attempt to give a voice to the millions whose voices were silenced.”—Samuel L. Jackson, human rights activist and Hollywood iconFrom the writers behind the acclaimed documentary series Enslaved (starring Samuel L. Jackson), comes a rich and revealing narrative of the true global and human scope of the transatlantic slave trade. The trade existed for 400 years, during which 12 million people were trafficked, and 2 million would die en route. In these pages we meet the remarkable group, Diving with a Purpose (DWP), as they dive sunken slave ships all around the world. They search for remains and artifacts testifying to the millions of kidnapped Africans that were transported to Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean. From manilla bracelets to shackles, cargo, and other possessions, the finds from these wrecks bring the stories of lost lives back to the surface. As we follow the men and women of DWP across eleven countries, Jacobovici and Kingsley’s rich research puts the archaeology and history of these wrecks that lost between 1670 to 1858 in vivid context. From the ports of Gold Coast Africa, to the corporate hubs of trading companies of England, Portugal and the Netherlands, and the final destinations in the New World, Jacobovici and Kingsley show how the slave trade touched every nation and every society on earth. Though global in scope, Enslaved makes history personal as we experience the divers’ sadness, anger, reverence, and awe as they hold tangible pieces of their ancestors’ world in their hands. What those people suffered on board those ships can never be forgiven. Enslaved works to ensure that it will always be remembered and understood, and is the first book to tell the story of the transatlantic slave trade from the bottom of the sea.Trade Review“A very important book. Through shipwrecks and the investigations of a small group of underwater explorers, Jacobovici and Kingsley tell the story of slavery in monstrous, unflinching detail. It's a story that needs to be told and Jacobovici (a brilliant storyteller) and Kingsley (a master maritime archaeologist) give it to us point-blank. It's more than a book; it's a message never to be forgotten.” * Mensun Bound, director of exploration for the Endurance22 expedition, and author of The Ship Beneath the Ice: The Discovery of Shackleton's Endurance *“For me, Enslaved is an attempt to give a voice to the millions whose voices were silenced.” -- Samuel L. Jackson, human rights activist and Hollywood icon“A vast history has been submerged on the ocean floor for centuries. With Diving With A Purpose, Kingsley and Jacobovici share the stories of these people once viewed as cargo so that they will live on with dignity. Enslaved explores the global impact of slavery by investigating the ships carrying those that were enslaved as well as by digging into the history of port towns and the complexity of the illegal slave trade. A necessary, poignant work.” * Booklist *“An informative account. Enslaved spotlights Diving with a Purpose, a group of scuba divers who located the Leusden, a Dutch slaver whose 1738 sinking off the coast of Suriname killed 664 enslaved Africans, and the schooner Home, an Underground Railroad “freedom boat” that sank in Lake Michigan in 1858, among other wrecks. The authors present a wealth of information and effectively commemorate the two million captured Africans who died en route to Europe and the New World. Readers will be horrified and enlightened.” * Publishers Weekly *"Enslaved illuminates the horrors of slavery in a compelling new way. Built around the recovery of slavery's material artifacts, this book offers powerful reminders of our proximity to the past, of the scars slavery has left on our present, and of the struggles of oppressed people seeking to build new futures." -- Christopher Bonner, author of Remaking the Republic: Black Politics and the Creation of American Citizenship“The spirt and souls of the enslaved peoples buried on the ocean floor and in other unlikely graveyards have not been silenced forever. This book enables descendants of enslaved Africans to better understand who they are and where they have come from.” -- Dr. Wilhelmina J. Donkoh, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, GhanaPraise for Simcha Jacobovici: "Absolutely fascinating. Many would argue the biggest story or one of the biggest stories of our lifetime.” * NBC's TODAY *"Jacobovici is a maverick, a self-made Indiana Jones." * Newsweek *Praise for Sean Kingsley: "Kingsley's bracing tale of religious intrigue grips the imagination." * Publisher's Weekly *"Readers will find that the thrill of tracing long-buried clues to those tantalizing locked gates is itself a great prize." * Booklist *

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book is a history of the nineteenth-century poetry of slavery and freedom framed as an argument about the nature of poetry itself: why we write it, why we read it, how it interacts with history. The poetry of the transatlantic abolitionist movement represented a powerful alliance across racial and religious boundaries; today it challenges the demarcation in literary studies between cultural and aesthetic approaches. Now is a particularly apt moment for its study. This book is a history of the nineteenth-century poetry of slavery and freedom framed as an argument about the nature of poetry itself: why we write it, why we read it, how it interacts with history. Poetry that speaks to a broad cross-section of society with moral authority, intellectual ambition, and artistic complexity mattered in the fraught years of the mid nineteenth century; Brian Yothers argues that it can and must matter today. Yothers examines antislavery poetry in light of recent work by historians, scholars in literary, cultural, and rhetorical studies, African-Americanists, scholars of race and gender studies, and theorists of poetics. That interdisciplinary sweep is mirrored by the range of writers he considers: from the canonical - Whitman, Barrett Browning, Beecher Stowe, DuBois, Melville - to those whose influence has faded - Longfellow, Lydia Huntley Sigourney, John Pierpont, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell - to African American writers whose work has been recovered in recent decades - James M. Whitfield, William Wells Brown, George Moses Horton, Frances E. W. Harper.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Illustrations Introduction: Present Valor 1: Anglo-American Poetry, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and the Haitian Revolution in United States Poetry 2: Antislavery Poetry in Public: George Moses Horton, John Pierpont, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 3: Witness against Slavery: John Greenleaf Whittier, William Wells Brown, and Lydia Huntley Sigourney 4: Present Valor and the Trauma of Slavery: James Russell Lowell and Elizabeth Barrett Browning 5: Frances E. W. Harper and Harriet Beecher Stowe: Preaching, Poetry, and Pedagogy 6: Aspects of America: James M. Whitfield, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman Epilogue: W. E. B. DuBois and the Legacy of Antislavery Poetry Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisI am Not Your Slave is the shocking true story of a young African girl, Tupa, who was abducted from southwestern Africa and funneled through an extensive yet almost completely unknown human trafficking network spanning the entire African continent. As she is transported from the point of her abduction on a remote farm near the Namibian-Angolan border and channeled to her ultimate destination in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, her three-year odyssey exposes the brutal horrors of a modern day middle passage. During her ordeal, Tupa encounters members of Africa’s notorious gangs, terrifying witchdoctors, mysterious middlemen from China, corrupt police and border officials, Arab smugglers and high-ranking United Nations officials. And of course, Tupa meets her fellow trafficking victims, young women and girls from around the world. Tupa’s harrowing experience, including her daring escape and eventual return home, sheds light on the most shocking aspects of modern day slavery, as well as the essential determination to be free.Trade Review"This incredible story offers three important insights: how it is possible for someone to be trafficked, why it might not be immediately apparent someone is in slavery, and, most important, why the antislavery movement needs strong survivor advocates like Tupa Tjipombo." Joanna Ewart-James, executive director, Freedom United"A riveting story of a young girl's courage in the face of unimaginable terror, her determination to fight for her dignityand above all, her courage to speak out and break the silence about the human trafficking nightmare we have ignored for too long." JULIAN SHER, author of Somebody's Daughter: The Hidden Story of America's Prostituted Children and the Battle to Save Them"[A] vivid, soulful account with personal details, yet hers cannot be called a singular story." Booklist"For readers who wish to understand more fully the grim reality of human trafficking." Library Journal Online"Her unflinching determination to survive drives the book and drags her readers kicking and screaming and clutching for respite...reading I Am Not Your Slave will move even the most stoic." BookTrib

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisPrior to the abolition of slavery, thousands of African-descended people in the Americas lived in freedom. Their efforts to navigate daily life and negotiate the boundaries of racial difference challenged the foundations of white authority--and linked the Americas together. In Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery John Garrison Marks examines how these individuals built lives in freedom for themselves and their families in two of the Atlantic World's most important urban centers: Cartagena, along the Caribbean coast of modern-day Colombia, and Charleston, in the lowcountry of North America's Atlantic coast. Marks reveals how skills, knowledge, reputation, and personal relationships helped free people of color improve their fortunes and achieve social distinction in ways that undermined whites' claims to racial superiority.Built upon research conducted on three continents, this book takes a comparative approach to understanding the contours of black freedom in the Americas. It reveals in new detail the creative and persistent attempts of free black people to improve their lives and that of their families. It examines how various paths to freedom, responses to the Haitian Revolution, opportunities to engage in skilled labor, involvement with social institutions, and the role of the church all helped shape the lived experience of free people of color in the Atlantic World.As free people of color worked to improve their individual circumstances, staking claims to rights, privileges, and distinctions not typically afforded to those of African descent, they engaged with white elites and state authorities in ways that challenged prevailing racial attitudes. While whites across the Americas shared common doubts about the ability of African-descended people to survive in freedom or contribute meaningfully to society, free black people in Cartagena, Charleston, and beyond conducted themselves in ways that exposed cracks in the foundations of American racial hierarchies. Their actions represented early contributions to the long fight for recognition, civil rights, and racial justice that continues today.Trade ReviewAn important contribution to the history of black freedom, this comparative study of free people of color in Charleston and Cartagena is equally attentive to the broader Atlantic and to local economic, social, demographic, and institutional circumstances. The result is a rich, textured, and locally grounded reconstruction of people of African descent's relentless pursuit for standing, respectability, family and community in the Americas."—Alejandro de la Fuente, Harvard University"Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery makes a crucial contribution to the history of the Atlantic world. By linking the lives of free blacks in Charleston, South Carolina, and Cartagena, Colombia, Marks's work bridges the sites of Atlantic slavery, treating disparate geographies as fundamentally linked and raising broad and important questions about the nature of black freedom. Marks's deeply researched and beautifully written study is an important work that will impact the fields of Latin American history, North American history, the histories of slavery and freedom, and beyond."—Jennifer L. Morgan, New York University"In Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery John Marks has produced a carefully researched and innovative study of how enslaved people in the Atlantic slave ports of Cartagena and Charleston achieved freedom and sought respectability under very different social, economic, and political systems. The key he argues, was the access to public institutions free people of color enjoyed in the Spanish city, and the commitment Charlestonians made to preserve slavery in perpetuity. Based on deep archival research in Colombia, Spain, and the United States, this is a welcome contribution to the study of slavery, racism, and emancipation."— Jane Landers, Vanderbilt University

Read more less

Book SynopsisA writer in search of his roots discovers stories of African American struggle, sacrifice, and achievement. In The Garretts of Columbia, author David Nicholson tells a multigenerational story of Black hope and resilience. Carefully researched and beautifully written, The Garretts of Columbia engages readers with stories of a family whose members believed in the possibility of America. Nicholson relates the sacrifices, defeats, and affirming victories of a cohort of stalwart men and women who embraced education, fought for their country, and asserted their dignity in the face of a society that denied their humanity and discounted their abilities. The letters of Anna Maria "Mama" Threewitts Garrett, along with other archival sources and family stories passed down through generations, provided the framework that allowed Nicholson to trace his family's deep history, and with it a story about Black life in segregated Columbia, SC, from the years after the Civil War to World War II.

Read more less