Presents the remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled white man and William posing as "his" slave. In December 1848, a young enslaved couple named Ellen and William Craft traveled openly by rail, coach and steamship from Macon, Georgia, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Ellen, who passed for white, disguised herself as a wealthy disabled...

Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives, Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation. After his rescue, Northup published...

Harriet Tubman is one of the giants of American history-a fearless visionary who led scores of her fellow slaves to freedom and battled courageously behind enemy lines during the Civil War. And yet in the century since her death, next to nothing has been written about this extraordinary woman aside from juvenile biographies. The truth about Harriet Tubman has become lost inside a legend woven of racial and gender stereotypes. Now at last, historian...

The story of slavery and the African American experience before the Emancipation Proclamation "isn't one story," according to DeRamus, but rather a multitude of stories. This book takes a broad look at the various extraordinary ways that enslaved and dehumanized people achieved freedom and the means to a self-determined life. Drawn from unpublished memoirs, census records, government reports, periodicals, books and much more, this narrative reveals...

From his birth into slavery to his escape and rise as a public speaker, abolitionist, and the most photographed man of the nineteenth century, Frederick Douglass has a uniquely American life story, part tragedy and part triumph. His writings, including the classic Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and his speeches inspired people to take action against the evils of slavery in the United States, and his words continue to resonate in today's...

Details the history of the Underground Railroad from the roots of slavery through the post-Emancipation era by focusing on the lives of the participants.

Simple text and photographs introduce the life of Harriet Tubman.

Henry Brown wrote that long before he came to be know as "Box," he "entered the world a slave." He was put to work as a child and passed down from one generation to the next -- as property. When he was an adult, his wife and children were sold away from him out of spite. Henry Brown watched as his family left, bound in chains, headed to the deeper South. What more could be taken from him? But then hope -- and help -- came in the from of the Underground...

"A revelatory account of the actions taken by the first president to retain his slaves in spite of Northern laws profiles one of the slaves, Ona Judge, describing the intense manhunt that ensued when she ran away."--NoveList.

A biography of the Underground Railroad conductor depicts her early life as a slave, her dedication to helping others escape from slavery, and her life after the Civil War.