First published in 1886, "Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People" is the fascinating biography of Harriet Tubman by American author and historian Sarah H. Bradford. The second of Bradford's works on the life of the courageous former slave and abolitionist, Tubman herself worked closely with the author to ensure that the details of her amazing life were captured accurately. Bradford's biography begins with Tubman's birth into slavery in Maryland in...

A seamstress and friend of Mrs. Abraham Lincoln describes her days as a slave and her memories of the Lincolns.

"An acclaimed historian's definitive biography of the most important African-American figure of the 19th century, Frederick Douglass, who was to his century what Martin Luther King, Jr. was to the 20th century"--

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 man, with William as "his" slave. Woo follows their journey north, and in joining the abolitionist lecture circuit. When the new Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 put them at risk, they fled from the United States. Their...

William Craft (1824—1900) and Ellen Craft (1826—1891) were American slaves from Georgia who managed to escape to the North in 1848. Disguised as a white male painter (Ellen Craft) and servant (William Craft), they travelled openly by rail and river and arrived in Philadelphia on Christmas Day. Their exploit became well known and was covered widely in the press, which put their lives in danger and resulted in the pair moving to England, where they...

"An updated edition of a classic African American autobiography, with new supplementary materials. The preeminent American slave narrative first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass's Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist from his birth into slavery to his escape to the North in 1838. Douglass tells how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and drivers, how he learned to read and write, and how...

"A revelatory account of the actions taken by the first president to retain his slaves in spite of Northern laws. Profiles one of the slaves, Ona Judge, describing the intense manhunt that ensued when she ran away."--NoveList. "When George and Martha Washington moved from their beloved Mount Vernon in Virginia to Philadelphia, then the seat of the nation's capital, they took nine enslaved people with them. They would serve as cooks and horsemen,...

A biography of the slave who escaped to Boston in 1854, was arrested at the instigation of his owner, and whose trial caused a furor between abolitionists and those determined to enforce the Fugitive Slave Acts.

"A groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist and her life as an enslaved woman, from the biographer who solved the mystery of her identity, with a preface by Henry Louis Gates Jr."--

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup is a memoir of a black man who was born free in New York state but kidnapped, sold into slavery and kept in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana before the American Civil War. He provided details of slave markets in Washington, DC, as well as describing at length cotton cultivation on major plantations in Louisiana.