"Wright details the experiences and hardships faced by Ginny, a young African American girl, and her family as they travel west from Virginia to California in 1865. Unwelcome on the big wagon trains departing from Independence, Missouri, Ginny's family must form its own group of newly freed friends and relatives. They endure snakebites, drought, broken wagon wheels, extreme temperatures, and treacherous mountains before finally reaching California. In keeping with the picture-book format, Wright includes no maps and mentions no famous landmarks, concentrating instead on a few episodes in the fictional journey."--Booklist
Taken from the records of the Federal Writers' Project of the 1930s, these interviews with one-time Virginia slaves provide a clear window into what it was like to be enslaved in the antebellum American South.
"Louis Hughes was born a slave in Virginia and at age 12 was sold away from his mother, whom he never saw again. After a few interim owners, he was sold to a wealthy slaveowner who had a home near Memphis and plantation nearby in Mississippi. Hughes lived there as a house servant until near the end of the Civil War, when he escaped to the Union lines and then, in a daring adventure with the paid help of two Union soldiers, returned to the plantation for his wife. The couple made their way to Canada and after the war to Chicago and Detroit, eventually settling in Milwaukee. There Hughes became relatively comfortable as a hotel attendant and as an entrepreneur laundry operator. Self-educated and eloquent, Hughes wrote and privately published his memoir in 1897."
On June 19, 1865, slaves in Texas were formally notified that they had been emancipated, or given their freedom. This day became an annual holiday known as "Juneteenth," and it is celebrated today with food, fireworks, and community and family parties that commemorate the end of slavery in the United States.
Robert Carter III was born into the highest circles of Virginia's Colonial aristocracy, neighbor and kin to the Washingtons and Lees and a friend and peer to Thomas Jefferson and George Mason. But in 1791, Carter severed his ties with this elite at the stroke of a pen. Having gradually grown to feel that what he possessed was not truly his, clashing repeatedly with his neighbors, his friends, government officials, and, most poignantly, his own family, he set free nearly five hundred slaves in the largest single act of liberation in the history of American slavery before the Emancipation Proclamation. (From the publisher's description)
"Juneteenth is the grandfather of all holidays for Black Texans
"From its spontaneous beginning on June 19, 1865, as slaves in Galveston, Texas, reacted to the delayed news of the Emancipation Proclamation, the holiday has spread nationwide among Black Americans. It is small gatherings on Daufuskie Island, South Carolina, to immense crowds in Buffalo, New York. This ethnic holiday includes the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, retelling of legends about how it got its name, parades, parties, and family reunions.
"Join the author and photographer as they traveled to experience this celebration of freedom in various spots around the United States."
This history book includes many illustrations and photos.
Contents: The day of jubilee -- How free is free? -- "Give us this, and we will protect ourselves" -- A second bondage -- Black spirit, black mind -- A new war -- Redemption and rejection -- Timeline.
Explores the events leading up to Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which freed most slaves, and its effects on the course of the Civil War.
