Born a free man in New York, Solomon Northup was abducted in Washington, D.C., in 1841 and spent the next twelve years in captivity as a slave on a Louisiana cotton plantation. After his rescue, he published this detailed account of slave life. It became an immediate bestseller and today is recognized for its unusual insight and eloquence.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe is a powerful and groundbreaking novel that played a pivotal role in shaping American history. Published in 1852, the book provides a stark depiction of the brutal realities of slavery in the United States. The story revolves around the life of Uncle Tom, an enduring and compassionate African American slave, and the various characters he encounters through his life of servitude. Stowe's narrative vividly...

In 1857 twelve-year-old Libby joins her father aboard the Christina and proves that she can be trusted to assist in the escape of a fugitive slave.

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...

Weary of the war, a Union lieutenant recalls his life with his twin brother on their family's Virginia plantation and the events that led them to fight on different sides in the Civil War.

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 histori

In 1838, a group of America's most prominent Catholic priests sold 272 enslaved people to save their mission, the fledgling Georgetown University. Journalist, author, and professor Rachel L. Swarns has broken new ground with her prodigious research into a history that the Catholic Church has edited out of its own narrative. Beginning in the present, when two descendants of a family enslaved by the church reconnect, Swarns follows their ancestors through...

A young girl flees from the farm where she has been worked as a slave and uses the Underground Railroad to escape to freedom in the north.

Set during the final days of slavery in 19th century Jamaica, following the trials, tribulations and survival of July and her odious mistress Caroline on a sugar plantation.