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 […]

This is US History 101 not CRT

Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells, 2nd edition by Ida B. Wells

The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States by Ida B. Wells

The Reason Why the Colored American is not in the World’s Columbian Exposition by Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, I. Garland Penn, F.L. Barnett

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CBR13bingo Uncannon Ida B. Wells is one of the most important and influential civil rights crusaders in US history, and yet I never learned her name in school. Born into slavery, orphaned as a teen, she became a world-renowned journalist who devoted her life to fighting US lynching laws of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, exposing the truth about the victims and perpetrators of these heinous acts. As she fought to educate the world about the plight of Blacks in the US, she […]

Audience Matters

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

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I have to confess that rating this book is difficult. Obviously the life of a man born into slavery is a compelling and difficult one, so it’s hard to read. But the real reason that this book is difficult to rate is that the author is writing for those with the power to end slavery – he is effectively convincing the reader of his personhood, and that he needs to is depressing, and creates a remove from his experience. Some of this might be attributable […]

An amazing job, indeed

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

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    A great thinker* once said that Frederick Douglass is “an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more”.  I was so inspired by this, I decided to read Frederick Douglass’ story in his own words. Plus I found this book at a used-book table at our local Greek festival and couldn’t pass it up. Douglass wrote a clear-eyed description of his life from his earliest memories to his life after escaping slavery. He knew his mother […]

Sore Thumb (Part 2)

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It’s hard to remember when I first chose to really think about race. Like I said, being a Montanan, and an extremely white Montanan at that, I didn’t know many people of color. My mother claims that I used to cheer for minority characters, even when they were the bad guys, but my clearest memory is being in 5th Grade and taking on a challenging assignment from my teacher Mr. Davey. Read an historical work from an upper reading level. I don’t know what prompted […]



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