Suggested Books

Youth Books

Adult Books

Documenting the American South

Documenting the American South (DocSouth), a digital publishing initiative sponsored by the University Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides access to digitized primary materials that offer Southern perspectives on American history and culture. It supplies teachers, students, and researchers at every educational level with a wide array of titles they can use for reference, studying, teaching, and research.

The texts, images, and other materials come primarily from the premier Southern collections in the libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. These original Southern materials can be found in several library locations, including the Southern Historical Collection, one of the largest collections of Southern manuscripts in the country; the North Carolina Collection, the most complete printed documentation of a single state anywhere; the Rare Book Collection, which holds an extensive Southern pamphlet collection; and Davis Library, which offers rich holdings of printed materials on the Southeast.

The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War

Author: Johnathan Daniel Wells
The Kidnapping Club is a powerful and resonant account of the ties between the institution of enslavement and capitalism, corrupt roots of policing in America, and the unflagging strength of Black activism. Dr. Wells’ gripping narrative tells the story of the powerful men who kept the illegal slave trade alive and well in New York City long after the institution of enslavement had been outlawed in the North.

South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and to the road to the Civil War

Author: Alice L. Baumgartner
The Underground Railroad to the North promised salvation to many American enslaved before the Civil War. But thousands of people in the south-central United States escaped enslavement not by heading north but by crossing the southern border into Mexico, where the institution of enslavement was abolished in 1837. In South to Freedom, historian Alice L. Baumgartner tells the story of why Mexico abolished the institution of enslavement and how its increasingly radical antislavery policies fueled the sectional crisis in the United States.

Subversives: Anti-Slavery Community in Washington, DC 1828-1865

Author: Stanley Harrold
While many scholars have examined the slavery disputes in the halls of Congress, Subversives is the first history of practical abolitionism in the streets, homes, and places of business of the nation’s capital. Historian Stanley Harrold looks beyond resolutions, platforms, and debates to describe how African Americans – both free and enslaved – and whites allies engaged in a dangerous day-to-day campaign to drive the peculiar institution out of Washington, D.C., and the Chesapeake region.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Incidents In the Life of a Slave Girl

Author: Harriet Jacobs

The true story of an individual’s struggle for self-identity, self-preservation, and freedom, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girlremains among the few extant slave narratives written by a woman. This autobiographical account chronicles the remarkable odyssey of Harriet Jacobs (1813–1897) whose dauntless spirit and faith carried her from a life of servitude and degradation in North Carolina to liberty and reunion with her children in the North.

The Color of Law

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

Author: Richard Rothstein

In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation—that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de juresegregation—the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments—that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.

Slavery by Another Name

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

Author: Douglas A Blackmon 

Based on a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Slavery by Another Name unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude. It also reveals the stories of those who fought unsuccessfully against the re-emergence of human labor trafficking, the modern companies that profited most from neoslavery, and the system’s final demise in the 1940s, partly due to fears of enemy propaganda about American racial abuse at the beginning of World War II.

Bound for Canaan

Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement

Author: Fergus Bordewich

Bound for Canaan tells the stories of men and women like David Ruggles, who invented the black underground in New York City; bold Quakers like Isaac Hopper and Levi Coffin, who risked their lives to build the Underground Railroad; and the inimitable Harriet Tubman. Interweaving thrilling personal stories with the politics of slavery and abolition, Bound for Canaan shows how the Underground Railroad gave birth to this country’s first racially integrated, religiously inspired movement for social change.

Youth Books

Unspoken: A Story From the Underground Railroad

Author/Illustrator: Henry Cole
Publisher: Scholastic Press, 2012

A young girl’s courage is tested in this haunting, wordless story.

When a farm girl discovers a runaway slave hiding in the barn, she is at once startled and frightened. But the stranger’s fearful eyes weigh upon her conscience, and she must make a difficult choice.Will she have the courage to help him?Unspoken gifts of humanity unite the girl and the runaway as they each face a journey: one following the North Star, the other following her heart. Henry Cole’s unusual and original rendering of the Underground Railroad speaks directly to our deepest sense of compassion.

 

River runs deep

Author:
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2015

Twelve-year-old Elias has consumption, so he is sent to Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave—the biggest cave in America—where the cool cave vapors are said to be healing. At first, living in a cave sounds like an adventure, but after a few days, Elias feels more sick of boredom than his illness. So he is thrilled when Stephen, one of the slaves who works in the cave, invites him to walk further through its depths.

But there are more than just tunnels and stalagmites waiting to be discovered; there are mysteries hiding around every turn. The truths they conceal are far more stunning than anything Elias could ever have imagined, and he finds himself caught right in the middle of it all—while he’s supposed to be resting. But how can he focus on saving his own life when so many others are in danger?

The Underground Abductor: A Graphic Novel

Author/Illustrator: Nathan Hale
Publisher: Amulet Books, 2015

This graphic novel, in Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales series, tells the true story of Araminta Ross, an enslaved woman born in Delaware. After years of backbreaking labor and the constant threat of being sold and separated from her family, she escaped and traveled north to freedom. Once there, she changed her name to Harriet Tubman. As an “abductor” on the Underground Railroad, she risked her life helping countless enslaved people escape to freedom.

Box : Henry Brown mails himself to freedom

Author: Carole Boston Weatherford
Illustrator: Michele Wood
Publisher: Candlewick Press, 2020

Henry Brown wrote that long before he came to be known as Box, he “entered the world a slave.” He was put to work as a child and passed down from one generation to the next — as property. When he was an adult, his wife and children were sold away from him out of spite. Henry Brown watched as his family left bound in chains, headed to the deeper South. What more could be taken from him? But then hope — and help — came in the form of the Underground Railroad. Escape!

In stanzas of six lines each, each line representing one side of a box, celebrated poet Carole Boston Weatherford powerfully narrates Henry Brown’s story of how he came to send himself in a box from slavery to freedom. Strikingly illustrated in rich hues and patterns by artist Michele Wood, Box is augmented with historical records and an introductory excerpt from Henry’s own writing as well as a time line, notes from the author and illustrator, and a bibliography.

Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom

Author: Carole Boston Weatherford
Illustrator: Kadir Nelson
Publisher: Jump at the Sun/Hyperion Books for Children, 2006

In lyrical text, Carole Boston Weatherford describes Tubman’s spiritual journey as she hears the voice of God guiding her north to freedom on that very first trip to escape the brutal practice of forced servitude. Tubman would make nineteen subsequent trips back south, never being caught, but none as profound as this first one. Courageous, compassionate, and deeply religious, Harriet Tubman, with her bravery and relentless pursuit of freedom, is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Kadir Nelson’s breathtaking illustrations bring Moses’ journey to life.

Freedom Roads : Searching For the Underground Railroad

Author: Joyce Hansen and Gary McGowan
Publisher: Cricket Books, 2003.

The Underground Railroad was meant to be a set of secret pathways, and its traces have been obscured by time. But Joyce Hansen and Gary McGowan, who won a Coretta Scott King Honor for their previous book, show how archaeologists and historians sift through corn cobs and root cellars, study songs and quilts, and use the latest technology to reconstruct those heroic journeys. Freedom Roads offers both a fresh look at the escape routes from slavery and an introduction to the tools, methods, and insights of archaeology, anthropology, and historical conservation. Here is a modern-day detective story that uncovers the traces of a time in American history when courageous slaves and idealistic abolitionists defied the law and saved lives.

The Underground Railroad : an interactive history adventure

Author: Allison Lassieur
Capstone Press, 2008

Starting in colonial times, thousands of African people were kidnapped and brought to the United States, where they were enslaved. Those who escaped were often caught, and, if so, treated harshly, or even killed, as were those who tried to help them escape. But that didn’t stop brave people from trying. By the 1850s an escape method dubbed the Underground Railroad was in full swing. Though it wasn’t a railroad, but a network of people helping enslaved people escape to the northern United States and Canada, it used railroad terms such as conductor and station. Imagine you were an enslaved person in the 1850s, desperate to escape to freedom, or a helper on the railroad, taking great risks so others could escape to freedom. The Underground Railroad lets you choose a path … to freedom or capture and, perhaps, death.