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.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780199831227
Publisert
2020
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
Oxford University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter