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.

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass was Douglass' third autobiography. In it he was able to go into greater detail about his life as a slave and his escape from slavery, as he and his family were no longer in any danger from the reception of his work. In this engrossing narrative he recounts early years of abuse; his dramatic escape to the North and eventual freedom, abolitionist campaigns, and his crusade for full civil rights for former slaves....

"Grapples with the cultural and social forces that have shaped our nation in the brutal crucible of race in five ... chapters--each addressed to a black martyr, from Breonna Taylor to Rev. Clementa Pinckney. Dyson traces the genealogy of anti-blackness from the slave ship to the street corner where [George] Floyd lost his life--and where America gained its will to confront the ugly truth of systemic racism"--

"On January 24, 1791, President George Washington chose the site for the young nation's capital: ten miles square, it stretched from the highest point of navigation on the Potomac River, and encompassed the ports of Georgetown and Alexandria. From the moment the federal government moved to the District of Columbia in December 1800, Washington has been central to American identity and life. Shaped by politics and intrigue, poverty and largess, contradictions...

"Jonathan White illuminates why Lincoln's then-unprecedented welcome of African Americans to the White House transformed the trajectory of race relations in the United States. Drawing from an array of primary sources, White reveals how the Great Emancipator used the White House as the stage to empower Black voices in our country's most divisive era"--

Follows the lives of two volunteer nurses on opposing sides of the Civil War - New England abolitionist Mary Phinney and Confederate supporter Emma Green. Alexandria, Virginia, 1862. Mary Phinney, a staunch New England abolitionist, and Emma Green, a native Confederate belle, collide at Mansion House, the Green family's luxury hotel that has been transformed into a Union Army hospital. Ruled under martial law, the border town in Alexandria is now...