Harriet Jacobs was born a slave in the American South and went on to write one of the most extraordinary slave narratives. First published pseudonymously in 1861,Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl describes Jacobs's treatment at the hands of her owners, her eventual escape to the North, and her perilous existence evading recapture as a fugitive slave. To save herself from sexual assault and protect her children she is forced to hide for seven years...

Born a slave in Virginia in 1856, Booker T. Washington rose in prominence to become black America's foremost spokesman. This is the dramatic autobiographical account of Washington's struggle to succeed and prosper in a country that refused to acknowledge his existence. From his fight for an education to his founding of the world-renowned Tuskegee Institute, Up From Slavery is one of the most significant and defining works in American literature. A...

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...

Based on the true story of Solomon Northup. It is 1841, and Northup, an accomplished, free citizen of New York, is kidnapped and sold into slavery. Stripped of his identity and deprived of all dignity, Northup is ultimately purchased by ruthless plantation owner Edwin Epps and must find the strength within to survive. Filled with powerful performances by an astonishing cast, 12 Years a Slave is both an unflinching account of slavery in American history...

Called "the veriest trash" by a member of the Concord, Massachusetts Library Board that banned the novel when it was first published, Huckleberry Finn has come to be viewed, as H.L. Mencken put it, as "one of the great masterpieces of the world." Ernest Hemingway wrote that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn....There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." A daringly ironic...

"A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history Kentucky, 1850. Jarrett, an enslaved groom, and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. As the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young...

Octavia E. Butler's bestselling literary science-fiction masterpiece, Kindred, now in graphic novel format. More than 35 years after its release, Kindred continues to draw in new readers with its deep exploration of the violence and loss of humanity caused by slavery in the United States, and its complex and lasting impact on the present day. Adapted by celebrated academics and comics artists Damian Duffy and John Jennings, this graphic novel powerfully...

"In the years just before the Civil War, during the most intensive phase of American slave-trade suppression, the U.S. Navy seized roughly 2,000 enslaved Africans from illegal slave ships and brought them into temporary camps at Key West and Charleston. In this study, Sharla Fett reconstructs the social world of these "recaptives" and recounts the relationships they built to survive the holds of slave ships, American detention camps, and, ultimately,...