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Up from Slavery

Booker T. Washington · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass · 126 pages

This book is an autobiographical account by runaway slave Frederick Douglass that chronicles his experiences with his owners and overseers and discusses how slavery affected both slaves and slaveholders.

Slavery HistoryAutobiographyEducationAmerican South
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Twelve Years a Slave

Solomon Northup · 228 pages

Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation.

Slavery HistoryAutobiographyHistoryMemoir & Biography
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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Harriet Jacobs · 228 pages

The true story of an individual's struggle for self-identity, self-preservation, and freedom, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl remains among the few extant slave narratives written by a woman. This autobiographical account chronicles the remarkable odyssey of Harriet Jacobs (1813–1897) whose dauntless spirit and faith carried her from a life of servitude and degradation in North Carolina to l

Slavery HistoryAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyHistory
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Slavery HistoryAutobiographyRacismMemoir & Biography
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EducationAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyAmerican South
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Long Walk to Freedom

Nelson Mandela · 638 pages

The riveting memoirs of the outstanding moral and political leader of our time, Long Walk to Freedom brilliantly recreates the drama of the experiences that helped shape Nelson Mandela's destiny. Emotive, compelling and uplifting, Long Walk to Freedom is the exhilarating story of an epic life; a story of hardship, resilience and ultimate triumph told with the clarity and eloquence of a born leader

AutobiographyMemoir & BiographyHistoryUplifting
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Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates · 155 pages

An Amazon Best Book of July 2015: Readers of his work in The Atlantic and elsewhere know Ta-Nehisi Coates for his thoughtful and influential writing on race in America. Written as a series of letters to his teenaged son, his new memoir, Between the World and Me, walks us through the course of his life, from the tough neighborhoods of Baltimore in his youth, to Howard University—which Coates dubs “

Slavery HistorySlavery DepictedMemoir & BiographyEducation
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The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game

Michael Lewis · 345 pages

Follows one young man from his impoverished childhood with a crack-addicted mother, through his discovery of the sport of football, to his rise to become one of the most successful, highly-paid players in the NFL.

Rags to RichesEducationAmerican SouthUplifting
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The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Malcolm X, Alex Haley · 484 pages

AutobiographyEducationMemoir & BiographySlavery History
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Slavery HistoryAutobiographySlavery DepictedMemoir & Biography
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Slavery HistoryAutobiographyMemoir & BiographySlavery Depicted
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Slavery HistorySlavery DepictedRacismHistory
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How the Word Is Passed

Clint Smith III, Clint Smith · 344 pages

Slavery HistorySlavery DepictedRacismHistory
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How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith

Malcolm Washington · 341 pages

Slavery HistorySlavery DepictedRacismHistory
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Narrative of Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth, Olive Gilbert · 144 pages

"A symbol of the strength of African-American women, and a champion of the rights of all women, Sojourner Truth was an illiterate former slave named Isabella who became a vastly powerful orator. Dictated to a neighbor and first published in 1850, Truth's celebrated story chronicles her life as a slave in New York State, her 1827 emancipation under state law, her religious experiences and her trans

Slavery HistoryAutobiographyMemoir & BiographySlavery Depicted
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Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

Douglas A. Blackmon · 474 pages

In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history--an "Age of Neoslavery" that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II.Under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for

Slavery HistorySlavery DepictedHistoryAmerican South
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Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story

Martin Luther King Jr. · 230 pages

Chronicles the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott sparked by Mrs. Rosa Park's refusal to give up her seat to a white male, describing the plans and problems of a nonviolent campaign, reprisals by the white community, and the eventual attainment of desegrated city bus service.

AutobiographyAmerican SouthMemoir & BiographyUplifting
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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

Slavery HistorySlavery DepictedRacismHistory
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Slaves in the Family

Edward Ball · 504 pages

In 1698, Elias Ball traveled from his home in Devon, England, to Charleston, South Carolina, to take possession of his inheritance: part of a plantation and twenty slaves. Elias and his progeny built an American dynasty that lasted for six generations, acquiring more than twenty plantations along the Cooper River near Charleston, selling rice known as Carolina Gold, and enslaving close to four th

Slavery HistoryAmerican SouthRacismHistory
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Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Doris Kearns Goodwin · 916 pages

Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president. On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the R

Slavery HistoryRags to RichesHistorySlavery Depicted
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Same Kind of Different as Me

Ron Hall, Denver Moore, Lynn Vincent · 240 pages

American SouthMemoir & BiographyRacismUplifting
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Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement

John Lewis, Michael D'Orso · 526 pages

The son of an Alabama sharecropper, and now a sixth-term United States Congressman, John Lewis has led an extraordinary life, one that found him at the epicenter of the civil rights movement in the late '50s and '60s. As Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Lewis was present at all the major battlefields of the movement. Arrested more than forty times and severely beat

AutobiographyMemoir & BiographyUpliftingAmerican South
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The Water is Wide

Pat Conroy · 260 pages

"A young white teacher goes to an island off the coast of South Carolina to teach a group of functionally illiterate black children. Yamacraw Island is backward and primitive, a world for the most part left untouched by the 20th century....By ignoring the textbooks and concentrating on meaningful situations and dialogue...he begins to make headway. He also, unfortunately arouses the ire of the pow

EducationAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyRacism
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The Story of My Life

Helen Keller · 240 pages

EducationAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyUplifting
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