Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Enslavement Narratives (and related texts) in preparation for class

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northrup

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” I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his […]

Even the greatest of us may be blind

Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington

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Booker T. Washington was born into slavery sometime around 1856. Following emancipation, he and his family moved to West Virginia to be with his mother’s husband, an escaped slave. He taught himself to read, and was able to attend school through perseverance and hard work. Working in coal mines and salt furnaces, he was eventually able to go to Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) for higher education. In 1881, Samuel Armstrong, Hampton Institute president, recommended Washington to be the leader of the new Tuskegee Normal […]

Filling in My Gaps

Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington

Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

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I made it a point earlier this year to try to be better. One of the things I told myself that I would do is read more books by black authors, especially those that I should have already read. I was assigned Should of Black Folk in college. I probably still have my copy on a bookshelf in my house but I doubt that I read it for class. Maybe enough to get by in case I was called on but I didn’t really read […]



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