Uncle Tom's Cabin:
This is one of those books that everybody has heard about but few people these days have actually read. It deserves to be read - not simply because it is the basis for symbols so deeply ingrained in American culture that we no longer realize their source, nor because it is one of the bestselling books of all time. This is a book that changed history.
Up From Slavery
Born into slavery, Booker T. Washington is freed when he is nine years old. To help support his family, he then works as a salt packer, coal miner, and house servant. All the while, he longs to become educated and to educate others. Poverty, racism, and other obstacles stand in his way. Will he overcome them all, or will the many barriers prove stronger than his unwavering determination?
1811-1896
Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Harriet was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, as the daughter of an outspoken religious leader Lyman Beecher. She was the sister of the educator and author, Catherine Beecher, clergymen Henry Ward Beecher and Charles Beecher.
Her father was a preacher who was greatly effected by the pro-slavery riots that took place in Cincinnati in 1834.
Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) depicted life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the U.S. and Britain and made the political issues of the 1850s regarding slavery tangible to millions, energizing anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. Upon meeting Stowe, Abraham Lincoln allegedly remarked, "So this is the little old lady who started this new great war!"
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