Washoe County Library System

Unexpectedly chosen to be a family manservant, an eleven-year-old Barbados sugar-plantation slave is initiated into a world of scientific inquiry and dignity before a devastating betrayal propels him throughout the world in search of his true self.

Five accounts of black slaves who managed to escape to freedom during the period preceding the Civil War.

Reveals the hidden truth about the Underground Railroad and black Americans' struggle for freedom. Before the Civil War, there was a crack team of abolitionists who used quilts and signal lanterns to guide enslaved people to freedom. RIGHT? WRONG! The truth is, the Underground Railroad wasn't very organized, and most freedom seekers were on their own.

"The Road to Dawn tells the improbable story of Josiah Henson, a slave who spent forty-two years in pre-Civil War bondage in the American South and eventually escaped with his wife and four young children, travelling 600 miles and eventually settling with his family as a free man across the border in Canada. Once there, Henson rescued 118 more slaves and purchased land to build what would become one of the final stops on the Underground Railroad,...

"The Underground Railroad to the North was salvation for many US slaves before the Civil War. But during the same decades, thousands of people in the south-central United States escaped slavery not by heading north but by crossing the southern border into Mexico. In South to Freedom historian Alice Baumgartner tells the story of Mexico's rise as an antislavery republic and a promised land for enslaved people in North America. She describes how Mexico's...

Describes how a network of people, organizations, and places helped slaves escape, and includes stories of people who used the Underground Railroad to escape.

Describes life under slavery, highlighting the Underground Railroad and the antislavery movement as a whole.

"A groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist and her life as an enslaved woman, from the biographer who solved the mystery of her identity, with a preface by Henry Louis Gates Jr."-- "Named a Most Anticipated Title by: Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post! A groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist and her life as an enslaved woman, from the biographer who solved the mystery of her identity, with...