Frederick Douglass was born in slavery as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey near Easton in Talbot County, Maryland. He was not sure of the exact year of his birth, but he knew that it was 1817 or 1818. As a young boy he was sent to Baltimore, to be a house servant, where he learned to read and write, with the assistance of his master's wife. In 1838 he escaped from slavery and went to New York City, where he married Anna Murray, a free colored...

"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...

"The Road to Dawn tells the improbable story of Josiah Henson, a slave who spent forty-two years in pre-Civil War bondage in the American South and eventually escaped with his wife and four young children, travelling 600 miles and eventually settling with his family as a free man across the border in Canada. Once there, Henson rescued 118 more slaves and purchased land to build what would become one of the final stops on the Underground Railroad,...

Harriet Tubman is best known as one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad. As a leading abolitionist, her bravery and selflessness has inspired generations in the continuing struggle for civil rights. Now, National Book Award nominee Erica Armstrong Dunbar presents a fresh take on this American icon blending traditional biography, illustrations, photos, and engaging sidebars that illuminate the life of Tubman as never before. Not...

Overview: In this remarkable work, Terry Alford tells the story of Abd al Rahman Ibrahima, a Muslim slave who, in 1807, was recognized by an Irish ship's surgeon as the son of an African king who had saved his life many years earlier. "The Prince," as he had become known to local Natchez, Mississippi residents, had been captured in war when he was 26 years old, sold to slave traders, and shipped to America. Slave though he was, Ibrahima was an educated,...

"George Washington spent most of his time farming, often employing experimental methods. Washington saw slave-powered scientific agriculture as the key to the nation's prosperity. Bruce Ragsdale argues that it was slave labor's inefficiency as much as its inhumanity that finally convinced Washington to emancipate the men and women bonded to him"--