Most histories of Reconstruction deal primarily with political issues and the larger conflicts between Democrats and Republicans, notherners and southerners. The Trouble They Seen departs from this approach to examine in their own words the lives of ordinary ex-slaves who had few skills and fewer opportunities. People are by now familiar with names like Frederick Douglass, Martin R. Delany, and Robert Smalls, but they know little of the men and women of more modest distinction, less still of the anonymous millions whose lives have been recorded in letters, diaries, newspaper accounts,...

Decades before Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Malcolm X, Martin Robison Delany (1812-1885) proclaimed his pride in being black, and demanded not only emancipation but independence for African Americans. Grandson of an African prince, son of a slave, Delany lived a life of singular achievement: the first African-American explorer to venture into the heart of Africa; the publisher, editor, and writer of one of the first black newspapers in the U.S.; one of the first three blacks admitted to Harvard Medical School; the first black to hold field grade rank of U.S. Army major during the...

This impressive collection, drawn from a wealth of original research into previously untapped sources--including letters, diaries, memoirs, speeches, poems, songs, newspaper articles, advertisements, a ship's log, and official documents--allows African Americans to speak afresh across more than two centuries. Besides the expected voices of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, this book makes vivid the experiences and views of a diverse range of lesser-known but equally fascinating personalities: Ira Aldridge, one of the great Shakespearean actors of his day; William Allen, the first black...

This is all part of Dorothy Sterling's fascinating description of The Outer Lands, and the plants and animals that inhabit this peninsula and chain of islands along our New England coast.

In the tumultuous years before the Civil War, a young white woman from a Quaker background came to embody commitment to the cause of antislavery and equal rights for black people. Abby Kelley became the abolitionist movement's chief money-raiser and organizer and its most radial member. She traveled hundreds of miles to awaken the country to the evils of slavery, braving hardship and prejudice as well as opening the way for other women, black and white, to take leadership roles. Now the full story of this principled woman has been told in Dorothy Sterling's compelling biography.

Including oral history, letters and excerpts from diaries, this is a documentary study of 2 million black slave women and 200,000 free black women in the 19th century.

Published for the first time in its century, "The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells"offers an intimate look at the hopes, thoughts and day-to-day life of the young woman who would later become the celebrated civil rights activist and antilynching crusader."