To Be A Slave

To be a Slave by Julius Lester 1968 by Scholastic Press

[image error]I watch shows like “Who do you think you are?” and “Finding Your Roots” which trace someone’s ancestors back through time. Often if there is a slave in the family, the search is a dead end because names are not often listed, just a number of slaves owned by someone. But sometimes they discover a complex and interesting story that shows that each person, slave or free, has a special story to tell.

This book is taken from interviews of slaves and former slaves by the Anti-Slavery Society and abolitionist groups and then the Federals Writers’ Project in the 1930s.

Each slave has a different experience and yet common threads. Slavery was different for the field slave from the house slave. The book touches on the slave trade, the auction block, the plantation, resistance movements, and emancipation.

It gives the reader a taste of the topic and hopefully leads to books that take each subject of slavery to a deeper examination. Our history of slavery is often ignored, but this book is a start for discovering the tragic and complex story that shaped our nation.

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