slave narrative: Quick Facts

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Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano's autobiography

Fugitive Slave Acts cartoon

Color illustration from Uncle Tom's Cabin showing a slave auction scene, with a group of enslaved people on a platform and a trader examining a man for sale in front of a crowd.

Elizabeth Keckley

How the Whitney Plantation teaches the history of slavery

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slavery African Americans African American literature narrative Memoir Novel War stories: 13 modern writers who served in war short story epic romance ballad saga longform journalism 12 Contemporary Black Authors You Must Read African American folktale

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African American literature: Slave narratives

Key People

Solomon Northup: image from Twelve Years a Slave (1853)

Solomon Northup

American farmer and writer

Harriet Beecher Stowe, engraving, 1872, after an oil painting by Alonzo Chappel.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

American writer and educator

Harriet Jacobs

Harriet Jacobs

American abolitionist and author

William Wells Brown

William Wells Brown

American writer