Ability Quote by Maya Angelou

The slave narratives, there is a wealth of research there, because you are hearing stories from the first person account, and that's a whole…

— Jurnee Smollett-Bell

“American slavery at its beginnings—obscure, distant, and tragic—is probably for most people a less attractive point of focus than the story of the discovery…

— Annette Gordon-Reed

But really, for me, I tried to find first-person accounts. I tried to read stories from men and women who had survived slavery because…

— Jurnee Smollett

“American slavery at its beginnings—obscure, distant, and tragic—is probably for most people a less attractive point of focus than the story of the discovery…

— Annette Gordon-Reed

“ When a slave rebels, it is nothing much to the people who read about it later. Just thin words on thinner paper worn…

— N. K. Jemisin

“When a slave rebels, it is nothing much to the people who read about it later. Just thin words on thinner paper worn finer…

— N.K. Jemisin

If you think your lot in life has been hard read “Up From Slavery” by Booker T. Washington, and you may see how fortunate…

— Napoleon Hill

When '12 Years a Slave' got that much attention, everyone started to copy that. That story has to be told, but there are a…

— Louis Gossett, Jr

“That we were slaves I had known all my life--and nothing could be done about it. True, we weren't bought and sold--but as long…

— Robert A. Heinlein

The inherited tradition is that we don't tell stories about slavery from the perspective of the slave. It's told through the president or the…

— Chiwetel Ejiofor

I always read all these books about the slaves. My mother is very educated. My father would talk to us like we were grown…

— Wynton Marsalis

The act of writing for the slave constituted the act of creating a public, historical self, not only the self of the individual author…

— Henry Louis Gates