What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorJefferson's Sons
Kimberly Brubaker Bradley · 400 pages
A fictionalized look at the last twenty years of Thomas Jefferson's life at Monticello through the eyes of three of his slaves, two of whom were his sons by his slave, Sally Hemings.
The Underground Abductor (An Abolitionist Tale about Harriet Tubman)
Nathan Hale · 128 pages
Araminta Ross was born a slave in Delaware in the early 19th century. Slavery meant that her family could be ripped apart at any time, and that she could be put to work in dangerous places and for abusive people. But north of the Mason-Dixon line, slavery was illegal. If she could run away and make it north without being caught or killed, she'd be free. Facing enormous danger, Araminta made it, an
Elijah of Buxton
Christopher Paul Curtis · 341 pages
Elijah has to go find this former slave that stole a friends money who was planning on buying his family back out of slavery. What happens along the way is terrifying to even think about, friends getting shot, dying, and freeing slaves.
Roots: The Saga of an American Family
Alex Haley · 704 pages
Roots is a novel written by Alex Haley and published in 1976. It portrays the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent and sold into slavery in the United States, and follows his life and the lives of his alleged descendants in the U.S. down to Haley. The release of the novel, combined with its hugely popular television adaptation, Roots (1977), led to a cultural se
Chains
Laurie Halse Anderson · 326 pages
If an entire nation could seek its freedom, why not a girl? As the Revolutionary War begins, thirteen-year-old Isabel wages her own fight...for freedom. Promised freedom upon the death of their owner, she and her sister, Ruth, in a cruel twist of fate become the property of a malicious New York City couple, the Locktons, who have no sympathy for the American Revolution and even less for Ruth a
Stolen into Slavery: The True Story of Solomon Northup, Free Black Man
Judith Bloom Fradin, Dennis Brindell Fradin · 120 pages
Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton
Don Tate · 37 pages
In the nineteenth century, North Carolina slave George Moses Horton taught himself to read and earned money to purchase his time, although not his freedom. Horton became the first African American to be published in the South, protesting slavery in the form of verse.
Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave
Laban Carrick Hill · 40 pages
Chronicles the life of Dave, a nineteenth-century slave who went on to become an influential poet, artist, and potter.
Day of Tears
Julius Lester · 177 pages
In this masterpiece of historical fiction, award-winning novelist Julius Lester tells the story of Emma -- a slave of Pierce Butler and caretaker of his two daughters -- and Pierce, a man with a mounting gambling debt and household to protect. Emma wants to teach his daughters, one who opposes slavery and one who supports it, to have kind hearts. Meanwhile, in a desperate bid to survive, Pierce de
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
Jon Meacham · 568 pages
In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power gives us Jefferson the politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars of his era. Philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson’s genius was th
The Hemingses of Monticello
Annette Gordon-Reed · 798 pages
Historian and legal scholar Gordon-Reed presents this epic work that tells the story of the Hemingses, an American slave family, and their close blood ties to Thomas Jefferson.
Someone Knows My Name
Lawrence Hill · 499 pages
Dreaming of escaping her life of slavery in South Carolina and returning to her African home, slave Aminata Diallo is thrown into the chaos of the Revolutionary War, during which she helps create a list of black people who have been honored for their service to the king.
The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion
Stephen B. Oates · 208 pages
Portrays America's most famous slave rebel and the insurrection he led in southeastern Virginia's Southampton County in August, 1831.
Cane River
Lalita Tademy · 418 pages
The "New York Times" bestseller and Oprah's Book Club Pick--the unique and deeply moving epic of four generations of African-American women based on one family's ancestral past.
Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad
Ellen Levine · 40 pages
A fictionalized account of how in 1849 a Virginia slave, Henry "Box" Brown, escapes to freedom by shipping himself in a wooden crate from Richmond to Philadelphia.
Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad
Ann Petry · 247 pages
A biography of the black woman whose cruel experiences as a slave in the South led her to seek freedom in the North for herself and for others through the Underground railroad.
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
C.L.R. James · 426 pages
En 1789, les deux tiers du commerce extérieur de la France se faisaient avec sa colonie antillaise de Saint-Domingue, laquelle représentait le plus grand marché de la traite européenne des esclaves. La plus grosse colonie du monde, fierté de la France et objet de convoitise de toutes les autres nations impérialistes, faisait partie intégrante de la vie économique d'alors. Tout cet ensemble reposai
A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons
Elizabeth Dowling Taylor · 316 pages
Chronicles the life of a former slave to James and Dolley Madison, tracing his early years on their plantation, his service in the White House household staff and post-emancipation achievements as a memoirist.
The Known World
Edward P. Jones · 400 pages
Henry Townsend, a black farmer, bootmaker, and former slave, has a fondness for *Paradise Lost* and an unusual mentor -- William Robbins, perhaps the most powerful man in antebellum Virginia's Manchester County. Under Robbins's tutelage, Henry becomes proprietor of his own plantation -- as well as of his own slaves. When he dies, his widow, Caldonia, succumbs to profound grief, and things begin to
The Confessions of Nat Turner
William Styron · 413 pages
This is a controversial historical novel purporting to tell the story of Nat Turner, a black American slave who led a large slave revolt in Virginia in 1831. The novel attempts to explore the reasons for the bloodthirsty revolt in which Turner and his followers killed a number of white plantation owners before being apprehended, tried and hanged.
The House Girl
Tara Conklin · 372 pages
A novel of love, family, and justice follows Lina Sparrow, an ambitious first-year associate in a Manhattan law firm, as she searches for the "perfect plaintiff" to lead a historic class-action lawsuit worth trillions of dollars in reparations for descendants of American slaves.
The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead · 416 pages
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a youn
Yellow Crocus
Laila Ibrahim · 243 pages
"Moments after Lisbeth is born, she's taken from her mother and handed over to an enslaved wet nurse, Mattie, a young mother separated from her own infant son in order to care for her tiny charge. Thus begins an intense relationship that will shape both of their lives for decades to come. Though Lisbeth leads a life of privilege, she finds nothing but loneliness in the company of her overwhelmed m
The Pox Party
M.T. Anderson · 368 pages
Various diaries, letters, and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, a young African American, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War.