Showing results for "robert shaplen"

A wry, instructive, and hugely entertaining account of “one of the most sensational trials in American history” (New York Times Book Review).On the night of July 3, 1870, Elizabeth Tilton confessed to her husband that she’d had an affair with their pastor, Henry Ward Beecher. This secret would soon transfix America, for Beecher was the most famous preacher of the day, founder of the most fashionable church in pooklyn Heights, a presidential hopeful, an inf...

Named one of the best non-fiction books of the twentieth century by Modern Library, Up from Slavery is the poignant telling, in plain language, of Booker T. Washington’s rise from slavery to become a preeminent advocate for civil rights of his time.Although Up from Slavery was initially criticized by African-American leaders for Washington’s perceived soft-pedalling of his message of racial equality and progress, the autobiography was a best-seller that furthered ...

“My Bondage and My Freedom,” writes John Stauffer in his Foreword, “[is] a deep meditation on the meaning of slavery, race, and freedom, and on the power of faith and literacy, as well as a portrait of an individual and a nation a few years before the Civil War.” As his narrative unfolds, Frederick Douglass—abolitionist, journalist, orator, and one of the most powerful voices to emerge from the American civil rights movement—transforms himself from slave to fugitive to reformer, l...

The 1859 novel tracing the life of a mulatto foundling abused by a white family in 19th century New England.

According to Wikipedia: "Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 14, 1915) was an American educator, orator, author and leader of the African-American community. He was freed from slavery as a child, and after working at several menial jobs in West Virginia, earned his way through an education at Hampton Institute and Wayland Seminary. Upon recommendation of Hampton founder Sam Armstrong, as a young man, he was appointed as the first leader of the new Tuskegee Institute, the...

In 1845, runaway slave Frederick Douglass became, almost overnight, the most celebrated African American author in history with the publication of his Narrative. In stark, powerful prose, he conveyed his observations of owners and overseers, the demoralizing effects of slavery on both slave and slaveholder, and his own triumph over oppression. In the latter part of the century, Douglass became a public figure of enormous stature: an orator, a newspaper publisher, and a statesman. ...

Like millions of my race, my mother and father were born slaves, but were not contented to live and die so. My father purchased himself in early manhood by hard toil. Mother saw no way for herself and children to escape the horrors of bondage but by flight. Bravely, with her four little ones, with firm faith in God and an ardent desire to be free, she forsook the prison-house, and succeeded, through the aid of my father, to reach a free State. Here life had to be begun anew. The old famili...

One of the greatest works of American autobiography, in a definitive Library of America text: Published seven years after his escape from slavery, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) is a powerful account of the cruelty and oppression of the Maryland plantation culture into which Frederick Douglass was born. It brought him to the forefront of the antislavery movement and drew thousands, black and white, to the cause. Written in pa...

Born into slavery in 1818, Frederick Douglass escaped to freedom and became a passionate advocate for abolition and social change and the foremost spokesperson for the nation’s enslaved African American population in the years preceding the Civil War. My Bondage and My Freedom is Douglass’s masterful recounting of his remarkable life and a fiery condemnation of a political and social system that would reduce people to property and keep an entire race in chains.This classic...

Up from Slavery is the 1901 autobiography of Booker T. Washington detailing his personal experiences in working to rise from the position of a slave child during the Civil War, to the difficulties and obstacles he overcame to get an education at the new Hampton University, to his work establishing vocational schools—most notably the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama—to help black people and other disadvantaged minorities learn useful, marketable skills and work to pull themselves, as a race, u...

Booker T. Washington's 'Up from Slavery' is a seminal autobiography that provides a detailed account of his journey from being enslaved to becoming one of the most prominent African American leaders of his time. The book is written in a simple and direct style, reflecting Washington's practical approach to dealing with the systemic challenges faced by African Americans in the post-Civil War era. Through vivid descriptions of his upbringing, education, and founding of the Tuskegee Institute...

"Up From Slavery" is the classic autobiography of one of the most controversial figures in American history, Booker T. Washington. "Up From Slavery", recounts Washington's rise from a Virginia tobacco farm slave to his long standing tenure as President of the famed Tuskegee Institute of Alabama. Washington's message is one of the advancement of African Americans through economic empowerment for as he put it, "the individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, m...