San Antonio College Library

This dramatic autobiography of the early life of an American slave was first published in 1845, when its young author had just achieved his freedom. Douglass' eloquence gives a clear indication of the powerful principles that led him to become the first great African-American leader in the United States. The personal account of a fugitive slave's privation and sufferings and his campaigns for Negro emancipation. This dramatic autobiography of the...

Rambles of a Runaway from Southern Slavery tells of an extraordinary life in and out of slavery in the United States and Canada. Born Elijah Turner in the Virginia Tidewater, circa 1810, the author eventually procured freedom papers from a man he resembled and took the man's name, Henry Goings. His life story takes us on an epic journey, traveling from his Virginia birthplace through the cotton kingdom of the Lower South, and upon his escape from...

On July 2, 1822, officials in Charleston, South Carolina, executed a free black carpenter named Denmark Vesey for planning what would have been the most extensive slave revolt in U.S. history. Only days before the rebellion was scheduled to begin, authorities learned of the plot and arrested and imprisoned those involved. That summer, more than a hundred black Charlestonians were put on trial for their part in the conspiracy. Thirty-five were eventually...

When the Cuban schooner Amistad, stripped of sail and stained with blood, appeared off Long Island in 1839, most Americans still countenanced slavery. But were the 39 Negroes on the Amistad really slaves? Were they men with rights to freedom? Were they murderers? Answers to these questions were sought by brilliant lawyers, journalists, and politicians.

In one of his most important books, the renowned historian Eugene D. Genovese examines slave revolts in the United States, the Caribbean, and Brazil, placing them in the context of modern world history. By studying the conditions that favored these revolts and the history of slave guerrilla warfare throughout the Western Hemisphere, he connects the ideology of the revolts to the ideology of the great revolutionary movements of the late eighteenth...

"The American Anti-Slavery Society originally published Narrative of James Williams, an American Slave, in 1838 to much fanfare, describing it as a rare slave autobiography. Soon thereafter, however, southerners challenged the authenticity of the work and the society retracted it. Abolitionists at the time were unable to defend the book; and, until now, historians could not verify Williams's identity or find the Alabama slave owners he named in the...

Describes the history of slavery and discusses the African slaves in Europe and the Americas, and the eventual coming of freedom.

Women and children have been bartered, pawned, bought, and sold within and beyond Africa for longer than records have existed. This important collection examines the ways trafficking in women and children has changed from the aftermath of the "end of slavery" in Africa from the late nineteenth century to the present. The formal abolition of the slave trade and slavery did not end the demand for servile women and children. Contemporary forms of human...

Presents more than 40 selections from interviews with former slaves conducted in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration that highlight different aspects of slave life, including work, abuse, living conditions, and emancipation.