Frederick Douglass

"I was born in Tuckahoe. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant."So begins the now-classic personal account of Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), who was born into slavery in Maryland and after his escape to Massachusetts...

“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is an 1845 memoir and treatise on abolition written by famous orator and former slave Frederick Douglass. It is generally held to be the most famous of a number of narratives written by former slaves during the same period. Born a slave circa 1818 (slaves weren't told when they were born) on a plantation in Maryland, Douglass taught himself to read and write. This book calmly but dramatically recounts...

Frederick Douglass Opie deconstructs and compares the food ways of people of African descent throughout the Americas, interprets the health legacies of black culinary traditions, and explains the concept of soul itself, revealing soul food to be an amalgamation of West and Central African social and cultural influences as well as the adaptations blacks made to the conditions of slavery and freedom in the Americas. Sampling from travel accounts, periodicals,...

Food has been and continues to be an essential part of any movement for progressive change. From home cooks and professional chefs to local eateries and bakeries, food has helped activists continue marching for change for generations. Paschal's restaurant in Atlanta provided safety and comfort food for civil rights leaders. Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam operated their own farms, dairies and bakeries in the 1960s. "The Sandwich Brigade" organized...

This book is a culturally situated study of the experiences and perspective garnered from of a group of post-secondary Black African American, bi-multi-racial male students aged 19-37. The undergirding interest was to see if there was an awareness of the group's manly inclinations, tendencies and predispositions and understand how such awareness projects and influences their quest and discipline for learning and to academically achieve. The sociological...

What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? (1852) is a novella by Frederick Douglass. Having escaped from slavery in the South at a young age, Frederick Douglass became a prominent orator and autobiographer who spearheaded the American abolitionist movement in the mid-nineteenth century. In this famous speech, published widely in pamphlet form after it was given to a meeting of the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society on July 5th, 1852, Douglass exposes...

One of the greatest African American leaders and one of the most brilliant minds of his time, Frederick Douglass spoke and wrote with unsurpassed eloquence on almost all the major issues confronting the American people during his life from the abolition of slavery to women's rights, from the Civil War to lynching, from American patriotism to Black Nationalism. Between 1950 and 1975, Philip S. Foner collected the most important of Douglass's hundreds...

The Heroic Slave (1852) is a novella by Frederick Douglass. Although he is more frequently recognized as prominent orator and autobiographer who spearheaded the American abolitionist movement, Douglass published one work of fiction in his lifetime. Inspired by the 1841 Creole case, in which an enslaved cook and a crew of nineteen fellow-slaves led a rebellion onboard a ship bound from Virginia to New Orleans, The Heroic Slave seeks to highlight the...

Collected here are both of Frederick Douglass' magazine articles: "My Escape from Slavery," and "Reconstruction," as well as his address "The Hypocrisy of American Slavery." These pieces show Douglass at his rhetorical best. Important reading for anyone wanting more after reading his Autobiographies.

The history of African Americans is a long, grim history full of injustices and brutality. But it is also filled with courage and perseverance. Gathered here in this omnibus edition are ten books that exemplify courage and a willingness to fight against all odds and at any cost for what is right. These books shed light on a proud people who have been mistreated for hundreds of years, a people who have refused to give up, and who continue to demand...