Books like The price for their pound of flesh by Daina Ramey Berry

Cora, a woman enslaved on a Georgia cotton plantation, partners with a new slave named Caesar to flee the South. Their daring escape follows a literal underground network of tunnels that mirrors the perilous journey of countless fugitive slaves toward freedom.

Ibram X. Kendi examines the long history of anti‑black racist ideas in America, revealing how intellectuals have shaped and justified racial inequality.

Frederick Douglass’s gripping autobiography recounts his journey from enslaved child to influential abolitionist, exposing the brutal realities of slavery and the resilience of those who endured it.

The Warmth of Other Suns is a non‑fiction study of the Great Migration, tracing the journey of nearly six million African Americans from the South to northern and western cities between 1915 and 1970.

Angela Y. Davis links the history of state violence and oppression to present struggles, urging solidarity and action for human liberty worldwide.

Harriet Jacobs' autobiographical narrative recounts her escape from slavery in North Carolina, her concealment in a hidden garret for seven years, and her eventual reunion with her children in the North.

A chilling memoir detailing Solomon Northup's harrowing experience as a captive on a Louisiana plantation for twelve years, from 1841 to 1853.

The true story of Mary, the last known survivor of the Atlantic slave trade, smuggled from Africa aboard the doomed Clotilda to Alabama.

Edward E. Baptist shows how slavery’s expansion from 1777 to 1847 powered America’s shift to industrial capitalism, turning the South into a cotton empire and reshaping the nation’s economy.

Kenneth M. Stampp’s history examines U.S. slavery as a system of labor exploitation, analyzing work, resistance, discipline, and daily life of slaves while challenging myths about black attitudes and slave treatment.

An in‑depth examination of how the United States’ slave‑trading economy depended on the reproductive labor of enslaved women, revealing the hidden ‘human savings accounts’ that sustained the nation’s finances and were finally undone by emancipation.

Here is the United States Congress in the 1830s, grappling (or trying unsuccessfully to avoid grappling) with the gravest moral dilemma inherited from the framers of the Constitution. Here is the concept (and reality) of the ownership of human beings confronting three of the most powerful ideas of the time: American republicanism, American civil liberties, American representative government. This book re-creates an episode in our past, now forgotten, that once stirred and engrossed the nation: the congressional fight over petitions against slavery. The action takes place in the House of Representatives. Beginning in 1835, a new flood of abolitionist petitions pours into the House. The powers-that-be respond with a gag rule as their means of keeping these appeals off the House floor and excluding them from national discussion. A small band of congressmen, led by former president John Quincy Adams, battles against successive versions of the gag and introduces petitions in spite of it. Then, in February 1837, Adams raises the stakes by forcing the House to cope with what he calls "The Most Important Question to come before this House since its first origin": Do slaves have the right of petition? When the Whigs take over in 1841, some expect the gag rule to be repudiated, but instead it is made permanent. A small insurgent group of Whigs, collaborating with Adams, opposes party policy and makes opposition to slavery their top priority. They constitute the seedbed for the formation of the Republican Party which will be, in the next decade, the beginning of the end of slavery. Congressional leaders try to censure Adams, and his well-publicized "trial" in the House brings the entire matter to the nation's attention. The anti-Adams effort fails, and finally, after nine years of persistent support of the right of petition, Adams succeeds in defeating the gag rule. . Throughout, one can see the gradual assembling not only of the political but also of the moral and intellectual elements for the ultimate assault on American slavery. When John Quincy Adams dies, virtually on the House floor, the young congressman Abraham Lincoln is sitting in the chamber.

A landmark history: the sweeping story of the enslavement of tens of thousands of Indians across America, from the time of the conquistadors up to the early 20th century. Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andrés Reséndez illuminates, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. There was no abolitionist movement to protect the tens of thousands of natives who were kidnapped and enslaved by the conquistadors, then forced to descend into the "mouth of hell" of eighteenth-century silver mines or, later, made to serve as domestics for Mormon settlers and rich Anglos. Reséndez builds the case that it was mass slavery--more than epidemics--that decimated Indian populations across North America. New evidence, including testimonies of courageous priests, rapacious merchants, Indian captives, and Anglo colonists, sheds light too on Indian enslavement of other Indians--as what started as a European business passed into the hands of indigenous operators and spread like wildfire across vast tracts of the American Southwest. The Other Slavery reveals nothing less than a key missing piece of American history. For over two centuries we have fought over, abolished, and tried to come to grips with African-American slavery. It is time for the West to confront an entirely separate, equally devastating enslavement we have long failed to see truly.--Adapted from dust jacket.

William Wells Brown’s *Clotel*, first novel by an African‑American author, follows the lives of Thomas Jefferson’s mixed‑race daughters, exploring how the institution of slavery uproots family bonds and forces mothers and children into harsh new realities.

A first‑hand account of William Wells Brown’s life as an enslaved person in St. Louis and beyond, detailing the harsh realities of slavery and the longing for freedom.

Awesome. Excellent read. Could not put it down.

Reconstruction of the lives of 110 enslaved Africans from Benin and Nigeria who arrived in Alabama's Clotilda in 1860, their journey through the slave trade, and their post‑emancipation community known as African Town.

Sterling Stuckey’s study examines how African cultural traditions shaped the shared identity of enslaved peoples in the American South, highlighting a persistent Afro‑centric ethos that influenced race relations after emancipation.