blacks

A biography of the former slave who became well-known as an abolitionist and advocate of women's rights.

South African children gather to welcome home their fathers who have been away for several months working in the mines.

When her mother dies, eleven-year-old Comfort leaves England to live with her father in Ghana.

Twelve tales of African and African American origin include "How God Made the Butterflies," "The Girl With the Large Eyes," "Stagolee," and "People Who Could Fly.".

Chronicles the experiences of the first Africans in the New World and the roles they played in the new societies.

Two children captured by a band of rebel soldiers in the Congo vow to protect an orphaned baby gorilla.

Recounts the extraordinary friendship between Jerome Foxworthy, a top student, loving son, basketball star, and first Black to integrate his southern high school, and Bix, a white athlete facing problems in his life.

A collection of poems exploring the theme of African-American identity.

The Atlantic slave trade was the largest forced migration in history (12,500,000 people) and the toll in lives damaged or destroyed is incalcuable. Of this amount only an estimted 389,000 people came to the American South, and about 79,000 of those after 1800. Most of the slaves' stories are lost to history, making the few that can be reconstructed, critical to an understanding of slavery in the South. Subjects in this book were all natives of West Africa who lived in the American South between 1760 and 1860. They include Elizabeth Cleveland Hardcastle, the mixed-race daughter of an African slave-trading family who invested in South Carolina rice plantations and slaves; Robert Johnson, kidnapped as a child and sold into slavery in Georgia; Dimmock Charlton who bought his freedom after being illegally enslaved in Savahhah; and a group of unidentified Africans who were picked up by a British ship in the Caribbean, and were eventually returned to their homeland. All of these people led exceptional lives, of which slavery was just one part, and show how the slave trade operated and who was involved.

Josiah Henson and his family risked starvation, exposure, and recapture and walked from Kentucky to Ohio. Native Americans assisted the struggling family, as did sympathetic boatmen who ferried them safely across Lake Erie. Once in Ontario, Canada, Henson took an active role in organizing a self-sufficient community. His story helped alert his contemporaries to the horrors and heartbreak of slavery. His story was originally published in 1849.