During the Reconstruction Era, people emancipated from slavery searched for their loved ones throughout the United States and Canada. They often used "last seen" ads. This is one case of successful reunification.
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Belinda Sutton petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for a pension as reparations for the wealth she produced and was stolen from her while she was enslaved.
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Picture book. By Janet Halfmann. Illustrated by London Ladd. 2018. 40 pages.
Tells the story of Lilly Ann Granderson, an enslaved woman who taught hundreds of people in Kentucky and Mississippi to read.
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Digital collection. Crowdsourcing project that provides access to information, through thousands of print advertisements, about freedom-seekers and their would-be enslavers in the 18th and 19th centuries.
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Hercules, the head cook at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate and slave labor camp, escaped to freedom in Pennsylvania.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Kathleen Van Cleve. 2019. 272 pages.
This is the true story of Ona Judge who escaped from enslavement by George and Martha Washington.
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Twenty-four enslaved Africans launched a rebellion in Manhattan, New York.
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The U.S. Civil War ended when the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to U.S. General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in south-central Virginia.
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Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Michael G. Long, foreword by Chris Hedges, afterword by Dolores Huerta. 2019. 610 pages.
Encounter the voices of activists sharing instructive stories through narrative and primary documents.
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Confederate troops massacred over 500 surrendering Union soldiers, majority African American, at the Civil War Battle of Fort Pillow.
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Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez.
Through a mixer activity, students encounter how enslaved people resisted the brutal exploitation of slavery. The lesson culminates in a collective class poem highlighting the defiance of the enslaved.
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The federal government compensated the “owners” of enslaved people for their “loss of property.” The people whose labor and families were stolen for generations were not compensated nor given any assistance for the transition to freedom.
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Harriet Tubman helped rescue Charles Nalle, a fugitive from slavery in Virginia, in Troy, New York.
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Africans on the Cuban schooner Amistad rose up against their captors, seizing control of the ship, which had been transporting them to chattel slavery.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Kate Schatz and illustrated by Miriam Klein Stahl. Ten Speed Press. 2020. 176 pages.
Paired with dynamic paper-cut art, readers explore several centuries of U.S. politics, culture, art, activism, and liberation.
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Late night raid on the Charleston post office by a mob of white supremacists and the burning of abolitionist mail.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Arisa White and Laura Atkins. 2019. 112 pages.
An illustrated children's book tells the story of real-life champion for civil rights Bridget "Biddy" Mason.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Erica Armstrong Dunbar. 2019. 176 pages.
This book blends traditional biography with illustrations, photos, and engaging sidebars that illuminate the life of Harriet Tubman.
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Digital collection.
Through this website, over 130,000 voyages made in the Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American slave trade can be searched, filtered, and sorted by variables including the port of origin, the number of enslaved Africans on board, and the ship's name.
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Ona Judge escaped enslavement by U.S. President George Washington.
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President Thomas Jefferson put his signature on the law known as the Insurrection Act.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds. 2020. 320 pages.
Described as 'Stamped from the Beginning' "remixed," this young adult book brings African American history into sharp focus as context for the here and now.
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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
In this activity, students take on the role of activist-experts to improve upon a Congressional bill for reparations for Black people. They talk back to Congress’ flimsy legislation and design a more robust alternative.
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Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Gabrielle Foreman, Jim Casey, and Sarah Patterson. Introduction by P. Gabrielle Foreman. 2021.
This volume of essays is the first to focus on the Colored Conventions movement, the nineteenth century’s longest campaign for Black civil rights.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Brian K. Mitchell, Barrington S. Edwards, and Nick Weldon. 2021. 256 pages.
This Reconstruction history graphic novel tells the story of Oscar James Dunn, a New Orleanian who became the first Black lieutenant governor and acting governor in the United States.
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