Schomburg Center - Unsung: Unheralded Narratives of American Slavery & Abolition

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UNSUNG

michelle d. commander is associate director and curator of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. A Ford Foundation and Fulbright fellowship recipient, she is the author of Afro-Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic and Avidly Reads Passages.

Kevin Young is currently the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, named a National Historic Landmark in 2017. He is the author of thirteen books of poetry and prose, most recently Brown (Knopf, 2018), as featured on TheDaily Show with Trevor Noah. His nonfiction book Bunk (Graywolf Press, 2017) won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was named a New York Times Notable Book. He is the editor of nine other volumes, including the anthology African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song, recently published by Library of America. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Young is the poetry editor of The New Yorker and newly named director of the Smithsonians National Museum of African American History and Culture.

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First published in the United States of America by Penguin Books 2021

Introduction, suggestions for further reading, headnotes, and compilation copyright 2021 by The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Foreword copyright 2021 by Kevin Young

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

The editor wishes to thank Yale University Library, where a scholar recently found the illustrative 1786 work An Essay on Slavery, with Justification to Divine Providence that God Rules over All Things by Jupiter Hammon, Hillhouse Family Papers (MS 282). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

Names: Young, Kevin, 1970 writer of foreword. | Commander, Michelle D., 1978 editor, writer of introduction. | Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, issuing body.

Title: Unsung: unheralded narratives of American slavery & abolition / The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; foreword by series editor Kevin Young; edited with an introduction by Michelle D. Commander.

Other titles: Unheralded narratives of American slavery & abolition

Description: [New York]: Penguin Books, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020042631 (print) | LCCN 2020042632 (ebook) | ISBN 9780143136088 (paperback) | ISBN 9780525507697 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Slave narrativesUnited States. | Slaves writings, American. | Fugitive slavesUnited StatesBiography. | African American abolitionistsBiography. | AbolitionistsUnited StatesBiography. | SlavesUnited StatesBiography. | SlaveryUnited StatesHistory19th century. | Antislavery movementsUnited

StatesHistory19th century. | African AmericansSocial conditions19th century.

Classification: LCC E444 .U57 2021 (print) | LCC E444 (ebook) | DDC 326/.80922 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042631

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042632

Cover photograph: The Civil War, contrabands (escaped slaves), at Foller's house, Cumberland Landing, Virginia, by James F. Gibson, 1862. Everett Collection / Shutterstock.

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