Stowe's powerful abolitionist novel fueled the fire of the human rights debate in 1852. Denouncing the institution of slavery in dramatic terms, the incendiary novel quickly draws the reader into the world of slaves and their masters. Stowe's characters are powerfully and humanly realized in Uncle Tom, a majestic and heroic slave whose faith and dignity are never corrupted; Eliza and her husband, George, who elude slave catchers and eventually flee...

Up from Slavery is the 1901 autobiography of Booker T. Washington detailing his personal experiences in working to rise from the position of a slave child during the Civil War, to the difficulties and obstacles he overcame to get an education at the new Hampton University, to his work establishing vocational schools—most notably the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama—to help black people and other disadvantaged minorities learn useful, marketable skills...

Appearing in 1855, My Bondage and My Freedom is the second autoobiography written by Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), a man who was born into slavery in Maryland and who went on to become the most famous antislavery autHor, orator, philosopher, essayist, historian, intellectual, statesman and freedom-fighter in US history. An instant bestseller, Douglass's autobiography tells the story of his early life as lived in 'bondage' and of his later life as...

Filled with adventure and humor, Mark Twain's classic novel vividly recreates the world he knew and loved from his years as a Mississippi riverboat captain. Young Huckleberry Finn is one of Twain's greatest creations and one of the most enduring characters in all American literature. He has no mother, and his father is usually drunk, often violent, and almost always vagrant. Huck must live by his wiles, his wits and at times, by petty thievery. But...

"From the National-Book-Award-winning author of All That She Carried, an intimate and revelatory reckoning with the myth and the truth behind an American everyone knows and few really understand. Harriet Tubman is, if surveys are to be trusted, one of the ten most famous Americans ever born, and soon to be the face of the twenty-dollar bill. Yet often she's a figure more out of myth than history, almost a comic-book superhero--the woman who, despite...

"All of London is abuzz with the scandalous case of Frannie Langton, who is accused of the brutal double murder of her employers, renowned scientist George Benham and his eccentric French wife, Marguerite. Crowds pack the courtroom, eagerly following every twist, while the newspapers print lurid theories about the killings and the mysterious woman being held in the Old Bailey. The testimonies against Frannie are damning. She is a seductress, a witch,...

""It is staggering that there is no date commemorating the end of slavery in the United States." -Annette Gordon-Reed. The essential, sweeping story of Juneteenth's integral importance to American history, as told by a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Texas native. Interweaving American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed, the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas in the 1850s, recounts...

Henry Shackleford, a slave boy from the Kansas Territory, is caught up in John Brown's crusade for freedom of slaves and when he escapes from his master's home, he must disguise himself as a girl in order to stay safe and is nicknamed Onion by John.

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Their first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway,...

<p>In a distant galaxy of colonized planets, the atrocity of slavery is alive and well. Young Thorby was just another bedraggled orphan boy sold at auction, but his new owner, Baslim, is not the disabled beggar he appears to be. Adopting Thorby as his son, Baslim fights relentlessly as an abolitionist spy. When the authorities close in on Baslim, Thorby must find his own way in a hostile galaxy. Joining with the Free Traders, a league of merchant...