Although slavery was a practice of forced labor and restricted liberties, as a teenager that was not a part of my consciousness. During the summer months, I enjoyed the outdoors and being with family. Fast forward 50 years, I can only imagine the mounting debt that families endured. Heads of households had to prioritize cash crops and could not spend time planting personal gardens for daily food consumption. Cash crops included tobacco, rice, and...

"Solenne Bonet is DoS--a Descendant of Slave--and has always known that her destiny would be in the service of men. At school, it is what she has been trained for, waiting for an algorithm to assign her to a white man, one of the thousands who sign up to be contract holders. She knows that there are girls who hope to be more than Maid or Mammy, who whisper about how they will get a white man to sign their freedom, how they will be sweet, but not sweet...

"In a time of division, we can have no better prophetic voice to frame today's discussions of justice and freedom than a one-legged fugitive slave who came to a Capitol without a Dome to tell how the Constitution could be made more perfect, in the name of God." -from a letter sent by the President of the Presbyterian Historical Society to the President of the Maryland State Senate In February 1865, just days after the adoption of the Thirteenth...

This groundbreaking Civil War history illuminates the unique development of antislavery sentiment in the border region of south central Pennsylvania. During the antebellum decades every single fugitive slave escaping by land east of the Appalachian Mountains had to pass through south central Pennsylvania, where they faced both significant opportunities and substantial risks. While the hundreds of fugitives traveling through Adams, Franklin, and...

Essays exploring Black women's experiences with slavery in the Americas. Gender was a decisive force in shaping slave society. Slave men's experiences differed from those of slave women, who were exploited both in reproductive as well as productive capacities. The women did not figure prominently in revolts, because they engaged in less confrontational resistance, emphasizing creative struggle to survive dehumanization and abuse. The contributors...

"When Adebimpe is ten, she is sold with her mother, Sanite, to plantation owner John du Marche. He soon renames her Ady but Sanite never lets her daughter forget who she really is - a person who can read and write and understand numbers. Most importantly, Sanite reminds Ady that she must never reveal these abilities to a white person, especially not her true name. Tasked with maintaining du Marche's home in vibrant New Orleans, Ady takes in the city...