LibGuides: African American History: Enslavement &amp; Freedom

e-Books

The Historian's Narrative of Frederick Douglass: Reading Douglass's Autobiography As Social and Cultural History

The book provides readers with the necessary biographical and historical context to better understand and fully appreciate the Douglass's classic memoir.

Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America

The unforgettable saga of one enslaved woman's fight for justice - and reparations.

Slavery in America (Gale Library of Daily Life)

Illuminates daily life in slave society in America from colonial times to the end of the Civil War. Provides information on the business and regulation of slavery, the plantation way of life, work, family and community, culture and leisure, health and medicine, religion, resistance and rebellion, and slavery and freedom in the North.

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

**Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in History** Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era.

Critical Insights: Frederick Douglass

This essay collection focuses on Douglass' contributions to American and African American literature. In addition to offering new perspectives of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself, this volume contains critical essays about "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?," The Heroic Slave, and Douglass' later autobiographies. It also considers Douglass' writings alongside the works of his contemporaries and explores his continuing literary legacy in the global twenty-first century.

Abolitionism: a Very Short Introduction

From early slave rebels to radical reformers of the Civil War era and beyond, the struggle to end slavery was a diverse, dynamic, and ramifying social movement.

They Were Her Property

A bold and searing investigation into the role of white women in the American slave economy.

An intimate economy : enslaved women, work, and America's domestic slave trade

Alexandra Finley adds crucial new dimensions to the boisterous debate over the relationship between slavery and capitalism by placing women's labor at the center of the antebellum slave trade, focusing particularly on slave traders'ability to profit from enslaved women's domestic, reproductive, and sexual labor.

Misuse of Power: African American Slavery and Its Legacy.

This book views the history of African American slavery and its legacy. The author examines the misuse and abuse of white power in America and focuses on the treatment of African Americans within the last three centuries.

Transatlantic Slave Trade (Black History in Two Minutes Serie)

Videos

The Age of Slavery (1800-1860): The African Americans—Many Rivers to Cross
This film illustrates how black lives changed dramatically in the aftermath of the American Revolution. For free black people, these years were a time of opportunity, but for most African Americans, the era represented a new nadir.
The Spirituals American Spirituals, Music and Slavery (Kanopy)
A musical art form, the American Spiritual, was born out of the folk songs of slaves. Melodies of backbreaking work were hummed, sung, and passed on throughout the Deep South over fields of cotton, greens, cowpeas, yams, rice,...

Web Sites & Primary Sources

Slavery and Abolitionist Movement (Black Freedom Struggle in the US series)
Featuring select primary source documents related to critical people and events in African American history.

Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law This link opens in a new window
Collection of legal materials on slavery in the United States and England, including statutes and case law from the colonial, state and federal level.

Slavery in the United States (Economics History Association)
Includes population and market price data on enslaved persons and slaveowners. Much of the data has been drawn from Historical Statistics of the United States.
Slavery by the Numbers (Encyclopedia Virginia)
A blog post sharing statistics on slavery. Includes direct links to the original sources.
American Abolitionists and Anti-Slavery Activists
The purpose of this website is to provide a comprehensive history of the abolition and anti-slavery movements in the United States, from the Colonial period until 1865. This includes a social, political, and economic history of both slavery in America and its opponents.
Digital Library on American Slavery (University of North Carolina)
An expanding resource compiling independent collections focused upon race and slavery in the American South, made searchable through a single, simple interface.
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.
Slaves and the Courts, 1740 to 1860
This collection consists of 105 library books and manuscripts, totalling approximately 8,700 pages drawn principally from the Law Library and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, with a few from the General Collections.