Dr. John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture

The best scholarship in African American history and culture compels us to expand our sense of who we are as a nation and forces us to engage seriously the experiences of all Americans who have shaped the development of this country. By publishing pathbreaking books informed by several disciplines, the John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture seeks to illuminate America's multicultural past and the ways in which it has informed the nation's democratic experiment.

Link to complete book series: http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/books?page_type=series&page_type_id=29
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North Carolina Slave Narratives

The Lives of Moses Roper, Lunsford Lane, Moses Grandy, and Thomas H. Jones

Edited By William L. Andrews

The autobiographies of former slaves contributed powerfully to the abolitionist movement in the United States, fanning national--even international--indignation against the evils of slavery. The four texts gathered here are all from North Carolina slaves and are among the most memorable and influential slave narratives published in the nineteenth century. The writings of Moses Roper (1838), Lunsford Lane (1842), Moses Grandy (1843), and the Reverend Thomas H. Jones (1854) provide a moving testament to the struggles of enslaved people to affirm their human dignity and ultimately seize their liberty.

Introductions to each narrative provide biographical and historical information as well as explanatory notes. Andrews's general introduction to the collection reveals that these narratives not only helped energize the abolitionist movement but also laid the groundwork for an African American literary tradition that inspired such novelists as Toni Morrison and Charles Johnson.
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About the Author

General editor William L. Andrews is E. Maynard Adams Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is author or editor of more than thirty books, including The Literary Career of Charles W. Chesnutt and To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865. Coeditors David A. Davis, Tampathia Evans, Ian Frederick Finseth, and Andreá N. Williams have earned graduate degrees in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.