The idea of interviewing slaves about their experiences dates to the 1760s, when abolitionists first began to publish slave narratives as a way to educate the public to the horrors of slavery. From 1929 to 1932, the social sciences department at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, sponsored a project to gather more interviews. In 1934, one of the Fisk project workers suggested the federal government hire unemployed white-collar blacks to ...

A never-before-published journal about slave ship interdiction of Africa is set into historical context by a Naval Academy English professor. ...

The story of those indomitable victims of slavery, who, during 200 years, resisted and died to keep the spirit of individual liberty alive. Tacky, Three-Finger Jack, and Samuel Sharpe spring vividly to life along with lesser-known, sometimes nameless men and women. ...

Most historians accept the proposition that in the first two years of the Civil War the North's primary aim was to reestablish the Union and the Constitution, not to emancipate slaves. But when northerners began clamoring for the confiscation of southern land and slaves as a punitive, military, and revenue-raising tactic, the constitutional right to personal property, particularly human property, came into question. In From Property to Person, ...

Jones, an instructor at Utah Valley State College, explores and corrects historians' errors surrounding the trial of Pedro Leon Lujan of New Mexico for Indian slave trading in the Utah Territory. She examines the case and the clashing racial, cultural, and religious beliefs and biases that characterized it, looking at Mormon policy and doctrine concerning black and Indian slavery and indenture. Includes b&w photos of the region, and ...

"A significant contribution to the history of the Caribbean and to the comparative study of slavery and transitions to free labor systems" (Nigel O. Bolland, Colgate University), this book "shifts the focus of interest from the islands' elites to the common people...with special reference to the black populations" (Richard Sheridan, University of Kansas at Lawrence). ...

In 1839, 53 Africans were illegally purchased and shipped to the Caribbean on The Amistad. During the voyage, the Africans took over the ship and killed the captain and one crew member. The ship was soon seized and the Africans were imprisoned. Though the murder charges were dismissed, the Africans were held in confinement as the question of property rights was argued. When the federal court determined that the Africans were not legitimate ...

In this book concerning the plantation system in the South, a promising lawyer, Davis purchased in 1847 the Cahaba River plantation of Beaver Bend, which he operated until his death in 1862. He cleared land, bought slaves, increased his cotton acreage, hired and fired overseers, tried slaves as overseers, experimented with seeds, irrigation and methods of fertilizing soil and erosion prevention. ...

This book provides a series of pioneering studies, by experts in the field, on resistance to forms of bondage in Africa, Asia and the Indian Ocean world. It analyses the causes, duration and structure of resistance, from go-slows to flight, and theft to sabotage. It also examines the reaction to resistance by the propertied classes and assesses to what degree, if any, resistance was effective in alleviating the nature of bondage. The case ...

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in Maryland. As a young boy he was sent to Baltimore, to be a house servant, where he learned to read and write, with the assistance of his master's wife. In 1838 he escaped from slavery and went to New York City, where he married Anna Murray, a free colored woman whom he had met in Baltimore. Soon thereafter he changed his name to Frederick Douglass. In 1841 he ...