Black History

"Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is the first full-length narrative written by a former woman slave in America." (book jacket)

"Olaudah Equiano's 1789 narrative tells the remarkable story of his childhood in Africa, his kidnapping and subsequent years as a slave and seaman, and his eventual road to freedom in the Caribbean and in England." (book jacket)

Truth's landmark slave narrative chronicles her experiences as a slave in upstate New York and her transformation into an extraordinary abolitionist, feminist, orator, and preacher. (Descriptive content provided by Syndetics™, a Bowker service)

What shines through each of these stories is the black woman's ability to recover in past oppression the hope for a better day.

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Ex-slave Frederick Douglass's second autobiography-written after ten years of reflection following his legal emancipation in 1846 and his break with his mentor William Lloyd Garrison-catapulted Douglass into the international spotlight as the foremost spokesman for American blacks, both freed and slave. (Publisher summary)

The first novel written by an African American, Clotel revolves around the fate of a child fathered by Thomas Jefferson with one of his slaves. After escaping from slavery, Brown published this book in 1853 in London, where he fled to evade the Fugitive Slave Act in the United States.

Our Nig was the first novel published by an African American in the United States. It tells a story of mixed race and struggle in the northern states.

"Seventy-one years before Rosa Parks's courageous act of resistance, police dragged a young Black journalist named Ida B. Wells off a train for refusing to give up her seat. The experience shaped Wells's career, and--when hate crimes touched her life personally--she mounted what was to become her life's work: an anti-lynching crusade that captured international attention. "(PUBLISHER CONTENT)

Harper was one of the first African American woman novelists. Iola Leroy, first published in 1892, explores the issues of mixed race and interractial marriage in the pre-Civil War United States.

"Self-published in 1899 and sold door-to-door by the author, this classic African-American novel—a gripping exploration of oppression, miscegenation, exploitation, and black empowerment—was a major bestseller in its day." (Descriptive content provided by Syndetics™, a Bowker service)

"Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) overcame racism and poverty to become one of the best-known authors in America, and the first African American to earn a living from his poetry, fiction, drama, journalism, and lectures." (book jacket)