The Alphabet as Resistance
Laws Against Literacy and Religion in the Slave South
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The Alphabet as Resistance
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Narrated by:
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Jerry Cunningham
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By:
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Jerry Cunningham
About this listen
Could slavery get worse after centuries of it? It did in the slave South in the decades just before the Civil War. This book explores the expansion of slavery during the period, the growth of the mass-labor cotton and sugar plantations, the expulsion of the Native Americans, and the new types of repression.
Those new types of repression included new laws that prohibited the teaching of a slave to read or write, under penalty of whippings or worse. Other new types of repression included laws against gatherings—aimed at religious gatherings in particular. Laws requiring slaves to have a pass from the slaveowner or a White person were ancient—they were tightened under the new regime. The laws were enforced by the notorious patrols, made of poorer White men, whose service was always mandatory and often drunken. The book chronicles, often in the voices of the slaves themselves, both the repression against literacy and religion and their resistance to it.
©2023 Jerry Cunningham (P)2023 Jerry CunninghamListeners also enjoyed...
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-
Story5 out of 5 stars 151
Few historical figures are as intriguing as John Brown, the controversial Abolitionist who used terrorist tactics against slavery and single-handedly changed the course of American history. This brilliant biography of Brown (1800-1859) by the prize-winning critic and cultural biographer David S. Reynolds brings to life the Puritan warrior who gripped slavery by the throat and triggered the Civil War. When does principled resistance become anarchic brutality? How can a murderer be viewed as a heroic freedom fighter? The case of John Brown opens windows on these timely issues.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The story of the man who saved America from itself
- By Marc on 09-29-20
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Island on Fire
- The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire
- By: Tom Zoellner
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 67
For five horrific weeks after Christmas in 1831, Jamaica was convulsed by an uprising of its enslaved people. What started as a peaceful labor strike quickly turned into a full-blown revolt, leaving hundreds of plantation houses in smoking ruins. By the time British troops had put down the rebels, more than a thousand Jamaicans lay dead from summary executions and extrajudicial murder. While the rebels lost their military gamble, their sacrifice accelerated the larger struggle for freedom in the British Atlantic.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Learned a lot
- By Amazon Customer on 04-10-21
By: Tom Zoellner
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African Founders
- How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals
- By: David Hackett Fischer
- Narrated by: Lamarr Gulley
- Length: 35 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 43
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Story5 out of 5 stars 42
African Founders explores the little-known history of how enslaved people from different regions of Africa interacted with colonists of European origins to create new regional cultures in the colonial United States. The Africans brought with them linguistic skills, novel techniques of animal husbandry and farming, and generations-old ethical principles, among other attributes. This startling history reveals how much our country was shaped by these African influences in its early years, producing a new distinctly American culture.
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3 out of 5 stars
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faux vocalizations
- By Porter on 08-19-22
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Dreams of Africa in Alabama
- The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America
- By: Sylviane A. Diouf
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
In the summer of 1860, more than 50 years after the United States legally abolished the international slave trade, 110 men, women, and children from Benin and Nigeria were brought ashore in Alabama under cover of night. They were the last recorded group of Africans deported to the United States as slaves. This book reconstructs the lives of the people in West Africa, recounts their capture and passage in the slave pen in Ouidah, and describes their experience of slavery alongside American-born enslaved men and women.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Should be required reading in all schools.
- By Anonymous User on 12-31-21
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Sweet Taste of Liberty
- A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America
- By: W. Caleb McDaniel
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 94
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 79
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 80
Born into slavery, Henrietta Wood was taken to Cincinnati and legally freed in 1848. In 1853, a Kentucky deputy sheriff named Zebulon Ward colluded with Wood's employer, abducted her, and sold her back into bondage. She remained enslaved throughout the Civil War, giving birth to a son in Mississippi and never forgetting who had put her in this position. By 1869, Wood had obtained her freedom for a second time and returned to Cincinnati, where she sued Ward for damages in 1870. Astonishingly, after eight years of litigation, Wood won her case: In 1878, a Federal jury awarded her $2,500.
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5 out of 5 stars
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insightful and educational
- By Mark W. on 06-29-20
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A Slave No More
- Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation
- By: David W. Blight
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey, Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the 100 or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A Piece Of History
- By John on 07-10-09
By: David W. Blight
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No More Lies
- By: Dick Gregory
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 55
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story5 out of 5 stars 49
In 1972, during the Black Power Movement, iconoclast Dick Gregory challenged one of the foundations of America itself - its history, which had been written almost exclusively from the white male perspective. In No More Lies, this true trailblazer gave voice to African Americans, speaking their truth about the past and race relations in the United States. No More Lies offers this incomparable satirist’s intellectual, conspiratorial, and humorous spin on the facts.
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5 out of 5 stars
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My Hertiages
- By n/a on 11-25-22
By: Dick Gregory
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The World That Made New Orleans
- From Spanish Silver to Congo Square
- By: Ned Sublette
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 237
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 214
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 213
Offering a new perspective on the unique cultural influences of New Orleans, this entertaining history captures the soul of the city and reveals its impact on the rest of the nation. Focused on New Orleans' first century of existence, a comprehensive, chronological narrative of the political, cultural, and musical development of Louisiana's early years is presented.
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2 out of 5 stars
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great book; terrible "performance"
- By WGNYC on 11-28-17
By: Ned Sublette
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The Road to Dawn: Josiah Henson and the Story That Sparked the Civil War
- By: Jared A. Brock
- Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Story5 out of 5 stars 73
This sweeping biography about the man who was the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is an epic tale of courage and bravery in the face of unimaginable trials. The Road to Dawn tells the improbable story of Josiah Henson - a dynamic, driven man with exceptional intelligence and unyielding principles, who overcame incredible odds to escape from slavery and improve the lives of hundreds of freedmen throughout his long life. He was immortalized by Harriet Beecher Stowe in her 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great book and very informative
- By plcd22 on 07-04-18
By: Jared A. Brock
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Bury the Chains
- Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves
- By: Adam Hochschild
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 112
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 93
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Story5 out of 5 stars 92
In early 1787, 12 men - a printer, a lawyer, a clergyman, and others united by their hatred of slavery - came together in a London printing shop and began a remarkable grass-roots movement, battling for the rights of people on another continent. Masterfully stoking public opinion, the movement's leaders pioneered a variety of techniques that have been adopted by citizens' movements ever since, from consumer boycotts to wall posters and lapel buttons to celebrity endorsements.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Eye-Opener
- By Carl Thompson on 01-06-19
By: Adam Hochschild
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Union
- The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood
- By: Colin Woodard
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 98
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 81
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 81
Union tells the story of the struggle to create a national myth for the United States, one that could hold its rival regional cultures together and forge an American nationhood.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Required Reading
- By Ben Brafford on 08-30-20
By: Colin Woodard
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The Bone and Sinew of the Land
- By: Anna-Lisa Cox
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
Starting in our nation's earliest years, thousands of free African Americans were building hundreds of settlements in the Northwest Territory, a territory that banned slavery and gave equal voting rights to all men. This groundbreaking work of research reveals the lost history of the nation's first Great Migration. Though forgotten today, these pioneers were a matter of national importance at the time; their mere existence leading to fierce political movements and battles that tore families and communities apart long before the Civil War erupted.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A must read for all!
- By Linda on 05-14-19
By: Anna-Lisa Cox
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Stolen
- The Astonishing Odyssey of Five Boys Along the Reverse Underground Railroad
- By: Richard Bell
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 108
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 91
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 92
Philadelphia, 1825: Five young, free Black boys fall into the clutches of the most fearsome gang of kidnappers and slavers in the US. Lured onto a small ship with the promise of food and pay, they are instead met with blindfolds, ropes, and knives. Over four long months, their kidnappers drive them overland into the Cotton Kingdom to be sold as slaves. Determined to resist, the boys form a tight brotherhood as they struggle to free themselves and find their way home.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Should have been a fact based novel
- By Cate F. on 01-11-21
By: Richard Bell
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Patriotic Treason
- John Brown and the Soul of America
- By: Evan Carton
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 15 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 76
John Brown is a lightning rod of history. Yet he is poorly understood and most commonly described in stereotypes, as a madman, martyr, or enigma. Not until Patriotic Treason has a biography or history brought him so fully to life, in scintillating prose and moving detail, making his life and legacy - and the staggering sacrifices he made for his ideals - fascinatingly relevant to today's issues of social justice and to defining the line between activism and terrorism.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Jarring Reminder of Antebellum America
- By Ronald A. Nelson on 12-22-06
By: Evan Carton
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Murder at the Mission
- A Frontier Killing, Its Legacy of Lies, and the Taking of the American West
- By: Blaine Harden
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
In 1836, two missionaries and their wives were among the first Americans to cross the Rockies by covered wagon on what would become the Oregon Trail. Dr. Marcus Whitman and Reverend Henry Spalding were headed to present-day Washington state and Idaho, where they aimed to convert members of the Cayuse and Nez Perce tribes. Both would fail spectacularly as missionaries.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good history; wanted more indigenous perspective.
- By Anonymous User on 07-06-21
By: Blaine Harden
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The Agitators
- Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women's Rights
- By: Dorothy Wickenden
- Narrated by: Heather Alicia Simms, Anne Twomey, Gabra Zackman, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 96
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 80
In the 1850s, Harriet Tubman, strategically brilliant and uncannily prescient, rescued some seventy enslaved people from Maryland’s Eastern Shore and shepherded them north along the underground railroad. One of her regular stops was Auburn, New York, where she entrusted passengers to Martha Coffin Wright, a Quaker mother of seven, and Frances A. Seward, the wife of William H. Seward. Through exhaustive research, Wickenden traces the second American revolution these women fought to bring about, the toll it took on their families, and its lasting effects on the country.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent!
- By Nikki on 12-22-21