"Included are narratives by James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw (1772) and Olaudah Equiano (1789), who were taken from Africa as children and brought across the Atlantic to British North America. The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831) provides unique insight into the man who led the deadliest slave uprising in American history.

The widely read narratives by the fugitive slaves Frederick Douglass (1841), William Wells Brown (1847), and Henry Bibb (1849) strengthened the abolitionist cause by exposing the hypocrisies inherent in a slaveholding society ostensibly dedicated to liberty and Christian morality. Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850) describes slavery in the North while expressing the eloquent fervor of a legendary woman. Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (1860) tells the story of William and Ellen Craft's subversive and ingenious escape from Georgia to Philadelphia.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) is Harriet Jacobs' complex and moving story of her prolonged resistance to sexual and racial oppression, while the narrative of the "trickster" Jacob Green (1864) presents a disturbing story full of wild humor and intense cruelty. Together, these works fuse memory, advocacy, and defiance into a searing collective portrait of American life before emancipation."--BOOK JACKET.