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| Author: James L. Smith James Lindsay Smith | Introduction: Rosalyn Howard Rosalyn Howard |
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Total Price:
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Product Summary
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Humanity Books
ISBN-10: 1591022045
ISBN-13: 9781591022046
Buy.com Sku: 35219250
Publish Date: 5/30/2004
Dimensions:
(in Inches) 8.25H x 5.5L x 0.5T
Pages:
178
See more in Cultural Heritage
| Floggings, undernourishment, overwork, substandard housing, humiliation, physical and psychological abuse of every sort--these were standard features of a slave's life in the American South for centuries until the end of the Civil War. In this day and age it may be difficult for most Americans to realize that such gross mistreatment of human beings was tolerated without a second thought only some one hundred and fifty years ago. Documents such as this memoir by former slave James L. Smith provide valuable and undeniable evidence of slavery's grim history. Originally published in 1881, this detailed narrative of Smith's long, eventful life is a stirring testament to his very survival under conditions of extreme hardship. Unlike the eloquent rhetoric of Frederick Douglass, James Smith's prose is simple and plain spoken. As such his words have the unmistakable sound of authenticity and what he has to say in his unadorned fashion is all the more poignant. He tells of his various cruel masters, the many beatings, the heartless separation of family members, his religious conversion, his training as a shoemaker, his daring escape to Philadelphia, life among the abolitionists, the Civil War, his continuing encounters with racism among Union soldiers, reactions to the Emancipation Proclamation and to the death of Lincoln, the migration of emancipated slaves to the West, his return visit to his old homestead in Virginia, celebrations over the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, and finally his hope for the future. With a valuable introduction by Rosalyn Howard, author of "Black Seminoles in the Bahamas, this is a moving, insightful look at a tumultuous America now gone, but one that still affectsthe present day in the lingering problem of race. |
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