Freed From Slavery But Still In Bondage

The author's lifetime of insight as the leading authority on slavery in the Western world is summed up in this compelling narrative that links together the profits of slavery, the pain of the enslaved, and the legacy of racism in a sweeping and compelling history of the institution of slavery in the United States. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture.

'It was said to me, "Better have a little of the plantation manner of speech than not; 'tis not best that you seem too learned."' Appearing in 1855, My Bondage and My Freedom is the second autobiography written by Frederick Douglass (1818-95), a man who was born into slavery in Maryland and who went on to become the most famous antislavery author, orator, philosopher, essaysist, historian, intellectual, statesman and freedom-fighter in US history. An instant bestseller, Douglass's autobiography tells the story of his early life as lived in 'bondage' and of his later life as lived in a 'freedom' that was in name only. Recognizing that his body and soul were bought and sold by white slaveholders in the US South, he soon realized his story was being traded by white northern antislavery campaigners. Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom is a literary, intellectual and philosophical tour-de-force in which he betrays his determination not only to speak but to write 'just the word that seemed to me the word to be written by me.' This new edition examines Douglass's biography, literary strategies and political activism alongside his depiction of Black women's lives and his narrative histories of Black heroism. This volume also reproduces Frederick Douglass's only work of fiction, The Heroic Slave, published in 1853.

In this controversial history the author tells the story of how the Civil Warand slavery were intertwined, and how internal social conflict undermined theConfederacy in the end.

Because the American history of slavery and emancipation tends to be foremost in Western minds, few realise that traditional forms of servitude still exist in a variety of places around the world: children are sold on the streets of Bangkok, bondage persists in India despite official efforts to abolish it and, until 1980, slavery was legal in Mauritania.

Emancipation, manumission, and complex legalities surrounding slavery led to a number of women of color achieving a measure of freedom and prosperity from the 1600s through the 1800s. These black women held property in places like Suriname and New Orleans, headed households in Brazil, enjoyed religious freedom in Peru, and created new selves and new lives across the Caribbean. Beyond Bondage outlines the restricted spheres within which free women of color, by virtue of gender and racial restrictions, carved out many kinds of existences. Although their freedom--represented by respectability, opportunity, and the acquisition of property--always remained precarious, the essayists support the surprising conclusion that women of color often sought and obtained these advantages more successfully than their male counterparts.

A history of the enslavement of Africans in different places and in different cultures, how it happened and what it was like.

First published in 1855, "My Bondage and My Freedom" is the second of three autobiographies written by the former slave and famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass. In this work, Douglass focuses his narrative on his transition from slavery to freedom, as well as examining the state of race relations and the politics of slavery leading up to the American Civil War. Written nearly ten years after his emancipation in 1846, Douglass reflects on his journey from a newly freed slave from Maryland, where he toiled away in harsh and violent conditions, to a free man in Massachusetts, where he encountered a new form of oppression and bondage. Douglass examines the social implications of the various forms of slavery that the black man was subjected to in 19th century America and how he himself broke those bonds to become a prominent speaker and influential figure in the fight for freedom and civil rights, a success he credited to his faith and literacy. In the pages of this deeply personal and inspiring work we find the voice that made Frederick Douglass one of the nation's most prominent figures in the American anti-slavery movement as well as an intimate portrait of his life. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper and includes an introduction by James McCune Smith.