Strategies of Slaves and Women

"The lives of the six principal characters encountered in this volume--five women and one man--collectively extend from the mid nineteenth to the mid twentieth century. What is most revealing is the evidence of consciousness and changing circumstances in the decades before World War I as these people went from slavery to some sort of freedom. This alternation was not necessarily by a formal act of emancipation, but all the focus characters finally belonged to or were sheltered in a Christian community with a strong antislavery ideology and the capacity to provide a base for social reconstruction."--Page 4 of cover.