Harriet Tubman is one of the giants of American history-a fearless visionary who led scores of her fellow slaves to freedom and battled courageously behind enemy lines during the Civil War. And yet in the century since her death, next to nothing has been written about this extraordinary woman aside from juvenile biographies. The truth about Harriet Tubman has become lost inside a legend woven of racial and gender stereotypes. Now at last, historian...

A biography of the nineteenth-century woman who escaped slavery and helped many other slaves get to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

"A talented seamstress, born enslaved in 1818, bought freedom for herself and her son."--

Presents the life of a California ex-slave, nurse, and midwife, who started many philanthropic projects.

"The life of Junius G. Groves, a sharecropper in Kansas who grew a modest potato farm into a potato kingdom."--

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...

Slave narratives are extremely rare, with only 55 post-Civil War narratives surviving. A mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives join that exclusive group. Handed down through family and friends, they tell gripping stories of escape: Through a combination of intelligence, daring, and sheer luck, the men reached the protection of occupying Union troops. Historian Blight...

"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...