They lived with professors and waited on former presidents. They were masons and nurses, school teachers and field hands, 246 people owned by a man who struggled with the institution of slavery. Yet, almost no one knows their names. When a white woman begins to study the history of the plantations these people built, the plantations where she was raised, she discovers that the silence around these people's lives speaks of a silence in her country's history . . . and in her own life. A creative nonfiction, history book about American slavery and its legacy in the United States. "In the late afternoons sometimes, I walk up and talk to the folks who are buried in the undulating earth, most of their graves are unmarked by any stone except, perhaps, two pieces of slate stuck vertically in the ground, one at head and one at foot, and long worn down or washed clean of names. But three stones bear words, gifts cut into rock - Ben Creasy, the carpenter, Jesse Nicholas, the stonemason, and Primus, the foreman. Ben and Jesse's stones are clear - with their names and dates marked deeply in the sandstone. I can find them in the records - know for sure who they are. Primus's stone is harder to know. The tradition here on the farm is that Primus the foreman at Upper Bremo is buried here, but I cannot be sure. The stone reads "Prams - 12," and I'm not sure that it refers to this Primus. It may be his grandson, also Primus, or some person I don't know yet. It's the 12 that throws me - the Primus I know lived to be an old man, long past 1812 - his death date is noted - 1849. That date seems right according to the records, but then, the records are so sparse; it's hard to know. I don't know how to solidify - to give storied flesh - to these rough marks hewn deep into stone."

A Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the mistreatment of black Americans. In this 'precise and eloquent work' - as described in its Pulitzer Prize citation - Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history - an 'Age of Neoslavery' that thrived in the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II. Using a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Blackmon unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude thereafter. By turns moving, sobering and shocking, this unprecedented account reveals these stories, the companies that profited the most from neoslavery, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.

Decades after this celebrated work of narrative nonfiction won the National Book Award and changed the American conversation about race, Slaves in the Family is reissued by FSG Classics, with a new preface by the author. The Ball family hails from South Carolina—Charleston and thereabouts. Their plantations were among the oldest and longest-standing plantations in the South. Between 1698 and 1865, close to four thousand black people were born into slavery under the Balls or were bought by them. In Slaves in the Family, Edward Ball recounts his efforts to track down and meet the descendants of his family's slaves. Part historical narrative, part oral history, part personal story of investigation and catharsis, Slaves in the Family is, in the words of Pat Conroy, "a work of breathtaking generosity and courage, a magnificent study of the complexity and strangeness and beauty of the word ‘family.'"

Beginning with the Colonial period, progressing through the Revolution and the Antebellum period, the book chronologically documents the historical evolution of slavery in the USA

"...A comprehensive compilation of records from the Edgefield County Archives pertaining to the purchasing and selling of slaves. The records include estate records, wills, inventories, appraisals, deed transfers, sheriff sales and other miscellaneous records, with approximately 29,000 listings and over 58,000 slave names. Many of the records contain information on gender, age, physical description, occupation and family relationships. The names are listed alphabetically by slave owner." --From press release.

'A beautiful, compelling artifice, spun from unspeakably savage facts . . . a fiction that faces the terrible truth about slavery' The Times WINNER OF THE COMMONWEALTH PRIZE FOR FICTION Based on a true story, Lawrence Hill's epic novel spans three continents and six decades to bring to life a dark and shameful chapter in our history through the story of one brave and resourceful woman. Abducted from her West African village at the age of eleven and sold as a slave in the American South, Aminata Diallo thinks only of freedom - and of finding her way home again. After escaping the plantation, torn from her husband and child, she passes through Manhattan in the chaos of the Revolutionary War, is shipped to Nova Scotia, and then joins a group of freed slaves on a harrowing return odyssey to Africa. What readers are saying: ***** 'Beautifully written ... an enlightening read' ***** 'Since reading, this has become my favourite book ever' ***** 'A powerful historical account of an incredible woman's journey'