Mary Prince (1788-1826) was born a slave in Bermuda. In 1815 she was sold to John Wood and taken to Antigua. Here she met Daniel James, a freeman, whom she married in 1826. In 1828, Prince was taken to England and claiming that the Woods had mistreated her she was allowed, under English law, to exercise her right to freedom and found employment as a domestic servant. Her story was published in 1831 and led to two libel trials. Sara Salih is Assistant Professor in English at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Judith Butler (Routledge 2002), and the editor, with Judith Butler, of The Judith Butler Reader (Blackwell, 2004). She is currently working on a book about representations of 'brown' women in England and Jamaica from the eighteenth century to the present day. Sara Salih is lecturer in English at Wadham College, Oxford. Sara Salih is Assistant Professor in English at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Judith Butler (Routledge 2002), and the editor, with Judith Butler, of The Judith Butler Reader (Blackwell, 2004). She is currently working on a book about representations of 'brown' women in England and Jamaica from the eighteenth century to the present day.

Sojourner Truth, born into slavery in the late 1790s as Isabella Baumfree, was the first African-American woman to win a court case when she reclaimed her son from the man who sold him back into slavery after his emancipation. After changing her name, Truth travelled as a Methodist preacher and spoke out regularly on behalf of the abolitionist cause. In 1851, at the Ohio's Women Rights Convention, Truth delivered her most well-known speech "Ain't I a Woman?" During her lifetime, Truth spoke out about many causes, including women's suffrage, prison reform, property rights for former slaves, and she encouraged African-Americans to enlist in the Union Army. Her activism led her to make connections with many of her contemporary abolitionists such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frances Gage. In 1850, Truth's dictated her memoir, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, to her friend Olive Gilbert and the title was soon met with acclaim by abolitionist readers and supporters. Truth died in 1883 and was buried alongside her family in Battle Creek, Michigan.

About the Introducer: ROBERT REID-PHARR, one of the country's leading scholars of early African-American literature, is a professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He lives in Brooklyn.About the Editor: SHELLY EVERSLEY is an assistant professor of American literature at Baruch College, specializing in African-American literature and culture. She is the author of Integration and Its Discontents and coeditor of Race and Sexuality.

Charles Heglar is assistant professor of English at the University of South Florida.

WILLIAM CRAFT (1821–1900), with his spouse Ellen Craft (1826–1891), returned to the United States after the Civil War. For the rest of their lives, often at great personal risk, the Crafts worked to improve conditions for African Americans in the South.

ELLEN CRAFT (1826–1891), with her spouse William Craft (1821–1900), returned to the United States after the Civil War. For the rest of their lives, often at great personal risk, the Crafts worked to improve conditions for African Americans in the South.

John R. McKivigan is the Project Director and Editor of the Frederick Douglass Papers and Mary O'Brien Gibson Professor of United States History at IUPUI. Heather L. Kaufman is a research associate on the editorial staff of the Frederick Douglass Papers. John Stauffer is professor of English and American Literature and African American Studies and chair of the Program in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University. He is the author most recently of Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln

William Wells Brown (1814 - 1884) was born a slave in Kentucky. In 1834, he he escaped to Ohio before moving to New York, and later, Great Britain. His novel, Clotel, is widely recognized as the first to be written by an African-American.

Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) is perhaps best known today as the editor of Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. She also founded the first children's magazine in America, Juvenile Miscellany, and compiled a highly successful domestic advice manual for women, The Frugal Housewife.

Born into slavery, Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915) overcame racism and oppression to become one of the most respected and influential African-American leaders of the late 19th century. He founded the Alabama Tuskegee Institute in 1881, and advocated the advancement of blacks through education and entrepreneurship. An adviser to Presidents Roosevelt and Taft, Washington displayed an apparent acceptance of segregation, and clashed with other black leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois who took a more militant approach to social change. His autobiography, Up from Slavery (1901), stands as a classic in the genre of narratives by American self-made men

Louis Hughes was born a slave in Virginia and at age 12 was sold away from his mother, whom he never saw again. After a few interim owners, he was sold to a wealthy slaveowner who had a home near Memphis and plantation nearby in Mississippi. Hughes lived there as a house servant until near the end of the Civil War, when he escaped to the Union lines and then, in a daring adventure with the paid help of two Union soldiers, returned to the plantation for his wife. The couple made their way to Canada and after the war to Chicago and Detroit, eventually settling in Milwaukee. There Hughes became relatively comfortable as a hotel attendant and as an entrepreneur laundry operator. Self-educated and eloquent, Hughes wrote and privately published this memoir in 1897. It is a compelling account, by turns searing and compassionate about slavery, slaves, and slaveowners. No reader can be unmoved as Hughes tells about his five attempts to escape, about having to stand by helplessly while watching his wife whipped, of the joy of finally meeting again the brother whom he had not seen since they were little children in Virginia. Yet he also writes knowingly about the economics of slavery and the day-to-day business of the plantation, and the glass-house relationships between slaves and masters. Hughes died in Milwaukee in 1913.

Louise Meriwether is author of six books, including the novels Daddy Was a Number Runner, Fragments of the Ark, and Shadow Dancing.

Solomon Northup (1808-c. 1863) era un hombre afroamericano libre del estado de Nueva York que en 1841 fue secuestrado y vendido como esclavo en Washington D. C. Trabajó forzosamente en varias plantaciones de Luisiana hasta que fue rescatado en 1853. Poco después de su liberación publicó sus memorias, que tuvieron una gran acogida y reforzaron el abolicionismo, una causa que ya había sido apuntalado el año anterior con la publicación de La cabaña del tío Tom, de Harriet Beecher Stowe, y que habría de desembocar en la Guerra Civil estadounidense. Northup llevó a sus captores ante los tribunales, aunque nunca llegaron a ser procesados. Desde entonces, se desconocen los detalles de su vida, pero se cree que murió en Glens Falls, Nueva York, en torno a 1863.

Stories of Stephen Smith's concerning five-dollar bills and boy travel writers have appeared in Geist and McSweeney's. He has also written for The Globe and Mail, Outside, and The New York Times Magazine. Smith tends a blog, puckstruck.com, that keeps an eye on hockey's history, culture, and literature. He shoots left.