Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its presentation of Tom, "a man of humanity," as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some contemporary critics, it remains a shocking,...

"Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonial, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising half-caste children who will be sent abroad to be educated in England before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the Empire. Her sister, Esi, will be imprisoned beneath...

Based on the Council's 30th anniversary grants initiative that invited projects on the subject of freedom; papers presented by scholars representing the six projects that received grants. Authors are: Daniel Weisman, Lawrence E. Rothstein, Paul Buhle, Mairéad Byrne, Daniel Scott, Joanne Pope Melish and Michael Bell.

Historian Edward Baptist reveals how the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States.

Washington Black is an eleven-year-old field slave who knows no other life than the Barbados sugar plantation where he was born. When his master's eccentric brother chooses him to be his manservant, Wash is terrified of the cruelties he is certain await him. But Christopher Wilde, or "Titch," is a naturalist, explorer, scientist, inventor, and abolitionist. He initiates Wash into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky; where...

"A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history Kentucky, 1850. Jarrett, an enslaved groom, and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. As the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young...

"The epic rendering of a Black woman's journey through slavery and liberation, set in 17th-century colonial Brazil. "Palmares" recounts the journey of Almeyda, a Black slave girl who comes of age on Portuguese plantations and escapes to a fugitive slave settlement called Palmares. Following its destruction, Almeyda embarks on a journey across colonial Brazil to find her husband lost in battle. Her story brings to life a world impacted by greed, conquest,...

"Following one family through nearly two centuries of indentured servitude and enslavement, this powerful account illustrates how the Catholic Church relied on slave labor and slave sales to help finance its expansion, bringing to light the people whose forced labor helped to build the largest denomination in the nation"--

"In the years before the Civil War, Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, struggles through the miles-long march, seeks comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother, opening herself to a world beyond this world."--

Consists of the last five chapters of Higginson's "Travellers and Outlaws". Fired with an abolitionist's passion, these five true accounts of slave uprisings in Latin America and the United States are among the best writings we have of the struggle to end slavery in the Western hemisphere. Written by a dedicated antislavery crusader and first published in the Atlantic Monthly in the 1850s and 1860s, these highly readable essays combine in-depth research...