The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave (1831) was the first female slave narrative from the Americas. The Story of Mattie J. Jackson (1866) recounts a quest for personal freedom and ends with a family reunion in the North after the Civil War. The Memoir of Old Elizabeth, a Colored Woman (1863) is the tale of a ninety-seven-year-old ex-slave who became a preacher. Lucy A. Delaney's From the Darkness Cometh the Light or Struggles for Freedom (c. 1891) records a former slave's achievements in the quarter-century after the end of the Civil War. Kate Drumgoold and Annie L. Burton also describe their successes in the postwar North while eulogizing black motherhood in the antebellum South.

Introduction by: William Andrews