To Be a Slave

Lester's first book and runner-up for the 1969 Newbery Medal. First Edition. "To be a slave. To be owned by another person, as a car, house, or table is owned. To live as a piece of property that could be sold, a child sold from its mother, a wife from her husband. To be considered not human, but a 'thing' that plowed the fields, cut the wood, cooked the food, nursed another's children, a 'thing' whose sole function was determined by the one who owned you." This book is about how it felt. All the aspects of slavery in America are described in vivid and often painful detail by black men and women who had themselves been slaves. The material is arranged in a historical time sequence which begins in Africa and culminates with the Civil War and Emancipation, but the emotions of the people who lived through it are timeless.