by collected by Genevieve W. Chandler (2008)
Coming Through marks the first complete publication of these interviews with former slaves and their descendants living in the Waccamaw Neck region of South Carolina as collected by Genevieve W. Chandler as part of the WPA Federal Writers Project. Between 1936 and 1938 Chandler interviewed more than one hundred individuals in and around All Saints Parish, a portion of Horry and Georgetown counties located between the Waccamaw River and the Atlantic Ocean. Her subjects spoke freely with her on topics ranging from slave punishment to folk medicine, from conditions in the Jim Crow South to the exploits of Brer Rabbit. --from publisher description.
Patricia C. McKissack
Brought up in France as the African slave companion of a nobleman's daughter, thirteen-year-old Zettie records the events of 1763, when she and her mistress escape to the New World where they are inadvertently drawn into the hostilities of the ongoing French and Indian War and, eventually, find a new direction to their lives.
Tara Quinn
A collection of the best works to appear in Brick, A Literary Journal over the last twenty-two years, including memoirs, interviews, essays and travelogues from some of todays best and most influential writers.
Mary Frances Berry
"My face is black is true but its not my fault but I love my name and my honest in dealing with my fellow man."~Callie House (1899)In her groundbreaking new book, My Face Is Black Is True, historian Mary Frances Berry resurrects the forgotten life of Callie House (1861-1928), ex-slave, widowed Nashville washerwoman and mother of five who, seventy years before the civil rights movement, headed a demand for ex-slave reparations. House was born into slavery in 1861 and sought African-American pensions based on those offered Union soldiers. In a brilliant and daring move, House targeted $68 million in taxes on seized rebel cotton (over $1.2 billion in 2005 dollars) and demanded it as repayment for centuries of unpaid labor.Dr. Berry tells how the Justice Department, persuaded by the postmaster general, banned the activities of Callie House's town organizers, violated her constitutional rights to assembly and to petition Congress, and falsely accused her of mail fraud; the federal officials had the post office open the mail of almost all African-Americans, denying delivery on the smallest pretext. Berry shows how African-American newspapers, most of which preached meekness toward whites, systematically ignored or derided Mrs. House's movement, which was essentially a poor person's movement. Despite being denied mail service and support from the African-American establishment of the day, Mrs. House's Ex-Slave Association flourished until she was imprisoned by the Justice Department for violating the postal laws of the United States; suddenly deprived of her spirit, leadership and ferocity, the first national grassroots African-American movement fell apart.Callie House, so long forgotten that her grave has been lost, emerges as a courageous pioneering activist, a forerunner of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. My Face Is Black Is True is a fascinating book of original scholarship that reclaims a magnificent heroine.From the Hardcover edition.
Frank McLynn
Napoleon Bonaparte's character and achievements have always divided critics and historians. In this compelling biography, Frank McLynn draws on the most recent scholarship and throws a brilliant light on this most paradoxical of men -- as military leader, emperor, and lover. Tracing Napoleon's extraordinary career, the author examines the Promethean legend from his Corsican roots, through the years of the French Revolution and his military triumphs, to his coronation in 1804 and ultimate defeat and imprisonment. McLynn brilliantly reveals the extent to which Napoleon was both existential hero and plaything of Fate; mathematician and mystic; intellectual giant and moral pygmy; great man and deeply flawed human being. In this work McLynn offers a vivid and valuable canvas of, and new dimension to, eighteenth-century European history. He also brings the reader, as never before, closer to understanding the much mythologized Napoleon. - Back cover.