Description

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True vignettes and traditional verse, set against starkly powerful images, tell the story of enslaved Africans in America as it has never been told before.

A man who cannot swim leaps off a slave ship into the dark water. A girl defies the law by secretly learning to read and write. A future abolitionist regains his will to live by fighting off his captor with his bare hands: "I will not let you use me like a brute any longer," Frederick Douglass vows. Drawing from authentic accounts, here is a chronology of resistance in all its forms: comical trickster tales about outwitting "Old Marsa"; secret "hush harbors" where Africans instill Christian worship with their own rituals; and spirituals such as "Go Down Moses," whose coded lyrics signal not just hope for deliverance, but an active call to escape. 

Boldly illustrated with extraordinary oil paintings by award-winning artist Shane W. Evans, and meticulously researched by Doreen Rappaport, this stunning collection — spanning the period from the early days of slavery to the Emancipation Proclamation — is an invaluable resource for teachers, parents, libraries, students, and people everywhere who care about what it means to be free, what it is to be human. Back matter includes important dates, a bibliography, resources for further information, and an index.

About the Author

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Praise For…

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An excellent account of the many ways in which slaves participated in bringing down the greatest evil in our nation's history.
–Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
 
Taken together, the text and illustrations make a powerful statement about the horrors of this institution, its traumatic effect on those who endured it, and the remarkable ability of the human spirit to face such adversity with courage and defiance.
–School Library Journal (starred review)
 
The research is documented, and younger readers can start with the experiences of ordinary people and then go on to the fuller histories listed in the bibliography.  Evans' large, dramatic oil paintings show both the suffering and the protest, as in one unforgettable close-up of a captured runaway in irons, his eyes closed, his head unbowed.
–Booklist
 
Weaving together first-person accounts by familiar historical figures, traditional black spirituals and vignettes featuring fictional composites of actual people, Rappaport creates an affecting, multitextured chronicle of slavery in America . . . The symbolic and realistic converge effectively in Evans's often emotionally charged oil paintings, which capture both the pain and the triumph at the heart of this trenchant compilation.
–Publishers Weekly
 
Rappaport's minimal text links many such eloquent examples of unquenchable resistance, both overt and concealed . . . Equally eloquent are Evans's powerful paintings.  Many of his figures are heroic in scale, their eyes gleaming with intelligence and determination . . . This is a handsome and inspiring book.
–The Horn Book