Children of bondage

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Edouard Glissant

""The Fourth Century tells of the quest by young Mathieu Be;luse to discover the lost history of his country, Martinique. Aware that the officially recorded version he learned in school omits and distorts, he turns to a quimboiseur named Papa Longoue;. This old man of the forest, a healer, seer, and storyteller, knows the oral tradition and its relation to the powers of the land and the forces of nature. He tells of the love-hate relationship between the Longoue; and Be;luse families, whose ancestors were brought as slaves to Martinique. Upon arrival, Longoue; immediately escaped and went to live in the hills as a maroon. Be;luse remained in slavery. The intense relationship that had formed between the two men in Africa continued and came to encompass the relations between their masters, or, in the case of Longoue;, his would-be master, and their descendants. The Fourth Century closes the gap between the families as Papa Longoue;, last of his line, conveys the history to Mathieu Be;luse, who becomes his heir.""--Publisher's description."

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Harriet Beecher Stowe

This unforgettable novel tells the story of Tom, a devoutly Christian slave who chooses not to escape bondage for fear of embarrassing his master. However, he is soon sold to a slave trader and sent down the Mississippi, where he must endure brutal treatment. This is a powerful tale of the extreme cruelties of slavery, as well as the price of loyalty and morality. When first published, it helped to solidify the anti-slavery sentiments of the North, and it remains today as the book that helped move a nation to civil war. "So this is the little lady who made this big war." Abraham Lincoln's legendary comment upon meeting Mrs. Stowe has been seriously questioned, but few will deny that this work fed the passions and prejudices of countless numbers. If it did not "make" the Civil War, it flamed the embers. That Uncle Tom's Cabin is far more than an outdated work of propaganda confounds literary criticism. The novel's overwhelming power and persuasion have outlived even the most severe of critics. As Professor John William Ward of Amherst College points out in his incisive Afterword, the dilemma posed by Mrs. Stowe is no less relevant today than it was in 1852: What is it to be "a moral human being"? Can such a person live in society -- any society? Commenting on the timeless significance of the book, Professor Ward writes: "Uncle Tom's Cabin is about slavery, but it is about slavery because the fatal weakness of the slave's condition is the extreme manifestation of the sickness of the general society, a society breaking up into discrete, atomistic individuals where human beings, white or black, can find no secure relation one with another. Mrs. Stowe was more radical than even those in the South who hated her could see. Uncle Tom's Cabin suggests no less than the simple and terrible possibility that society has no place in it for love." - Back cover.

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Fritz Hirschfeld

No history of racism in America can be considered complete without taking into account the role that George Washington - the principal founding father - played in helping to mold the racist cast of the new nation. Because General Washington - the universally acknowledged hero of the Revolutionary War - in the postwar period uniquely combined the moral authority, personal prestige, and political power to influence significantly the course and the outcome of the slavery debate, his opinions on the subject of slaves and slavery are of crucial importance to understanding how racism succeeded in becoming an integral and official part of the national fabric during its formative stages. Relying primarily on Washington's own words - his correspondence, diaries, and other written records - supplemented by letters, comments, and eyewitness reports of family members, friends, employees, aides, correspondents, colleagues, and visitors to Mount Vernon, together with contemporary newspaper clippings and official documents pertaining to Washington's relationships with African Americans, Fritz Hirschfeld traces Washington's transition from a conventional slaveholder to a lukewarm abolitionist.

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Léonie J. Archer

Bringing together normally self-contained areas of research, this book presents penetrating analyses of the nature and perpetuation of slavery through the ages.