Slavery was widely practiced throughout the ancient world, and in the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, which helped propel the United States into the Civil War.
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Who Was Sally Hemings? Sally Hemings (her given name was probably Sarah) was born in 1773; she was the daughter of Elizabeth (Betty) Hemings, and her father was allegedly John Wayles, Thomas Jefferson’s father‑in‑law. She came into Jefferson’s household as part of his inheritance from the Wayles estate in 1774, and as a child probably […]
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Historians and experts discuss the importance of the family unit in the lives of enslaved people.
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The former slave, whose brilliant prose and soaring oratory pricked the conscience of a nation, carefully shaped his own myth. Details like a white second wife didn’t fit.
Read more about What Frederick Douglass Revealed—and Omitted—in His Famous Autobiographies
