Slave narratives after slavery / edited by William L. Andrews.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Andrews, William L., 1946-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Enslaved persons--Southern States--Biography.

Enslaved persons.

Enslaved persons--Southern States--Social conditions--19th century.

African Americans--Biography.

African Americans.

Enslaved persons' writings, American.

Physical Description:

xxxii, 416 p.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, c2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The pre-Civil War autobiographies of famous fugitives such as Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, and Harriet Jacobs form the bedrock of the African American narrative tradition. After emancipation arrived in 1865, former slaves continued to write about their experience of enslavement and their upward struggle to realize the promise of freedom and citizenship. Slave Narratives After Slavery reprints five of the most important and revealing first-person narratives of slavery and freedom published after 1865. Elizabeth Keckley's controversial Behind the Scenes (1868) introduced white America to the industry and progressive outlook of an emerging black middle class. The little-known Narrative of the life of John Quincy Adams, When in Slavery, and Now as a Freeman (1872) gave eloquent voice to the African American working class as it migrated from the South to the North in search of opportunity. William Wells Brown's My Southern Home (1880) retooled the image of slavery delineated in his widely-read antebellum Narrative and offered his reader a first-hand assessment of the South at the close of Reconstruction. Lucy Ann Delaney used From the Darkness Cometh the Light (1891) to pay tribute to her enslaved mother and to exemplify the qualities of mind and spirit that had ensured her own fulfillment in freedom. Louis Hughes's Thirty Years a Slave (1897) spoke for a generation of black Americans who, perceiving the spread of segregation across the South, sought to remind the nation of the horrors of its racial history and of the continued dedication of the once enslaved to dignity, opportunity, and independence.

Contents:

Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (New York: G.W. Carleton, 1868)

John Quincy Adams, Narrative of the Life of John Quincy Adams, When in Slavery, and Now as a Freeman (Harrisburg, Pa.: Sieg, 1872)

William Wells Brown, My Southern Home, or, The South and Its People (Boston: A. G. Brown & Co., Publishers, 1880)

Lucy Ann Berry Delaney, From the Darkness Cometh the Light; or, Struggles for Freedom (St. Louis: J. T. Smith, 1891)

Hughes, Louis, Thirty Years a Slave, From Bondage to Freedom, The Institution of Slavery as Seen on the Plantation and in the Home of the Planter (Milwaukee: South Side Printing Company, 1897).

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-19-983122-X

0-19-972071-1

OCLC:

711774602