Over the years, the phrase ""southern oratory"" has become laden with myth; its mere invocation conjures up powerful images of grandiloquent antebellum patriarchs, enthusiastic New South hucksters, and raving wild-eyed demagogue politicians. In these essays, Waldo Braden strips away the myths to expose how the South's orators achieved their rhetorical effects and manipulated their audiences. The Oral Tradition in the South begins with two essays that trace the roots of the South's particular identification with oratory. In The Emergence of the Concept of Southern Oratory, 1850- 1950, Braden suggests that it was through the influence of southern scholars that southern oratory gained its renown. The second essay, The Oral Tradition in the Old South, focuses on antebellum times to reveal the several factors that combined to make the region a fertile ground for oratory. Braden further explores the antebellum oratorical tradition in The 1860 Election Campaign in Western Tennessee, analyzing speeches made in Memphis by such national figures as William L. Yancey, Andrew Johnson, and Stephen A. Douglas, and revealing the nature of political canvassing in that era. Shifting his discussion to the years that followed the Civil War, Braden examines, in Myths in a Rhetorical Context, how such speakers as General John B. Gordon and Henry Grady worked to restore the shattered self-esteem of the region by spinning myths of the Old South and the Lost Cause and by proclaiming the hopeful era of the New South. The fifth essay, The Rhetoric of Exploitation, probes the rhetorical strategies of the demagogue politicians of the twentieth century-strategies such as ""plain folks"" appeals and race-baiting. In the final essay, The Rhetoric of a Closed Society Braden analyzes the movement opposing racial integration in Mississippi. Showing how the White Citizens' Council, Governor Ross Barnett, and other leaders manipulated the public to make the state a closed society from 1954 to 1964. Although he takes pains to establish the historical context in each of these essays, Braden's emphasis as a rhetorical critic is always on the speeches themselves. He pays close attention to the kinds of appeals found in the words of the speeches and to the individual speaker's use of images and phrases to evoke particular myths. But Braden looks beyond the texts of the speeches to take into account the full context of the event. ""What the reader finds in the printed version of the text,"" he explains, ""might be only a small part of the myth, a tiny hint of what grinds inside frustrated listeners. Sometimes the trigger for the myth does not even appear in the printed version, because face-to-face the listeners and the speaker, feeling a oneness, evoke the myth without verbal expression."" To account for this nonverbal dimension of oratory, these essays assess the impact of the location and atmosphere of the gathering, the audience's expectations, and the speaker's use of ritual, symbolic gestures, and props. During the nearly forty years of his career, Waldo Braden has been a pioneer in the serious study of oratory. A landmark work, The Oral Tradition in the South is the capstone to a distinguished career, a comprehensive and authoritative study of the subject Braden has so innovatively researched.

"Just as SNCC's courage and commitment shaped the civil rights movement in the 1960s, so this critical reflection by SNCC activists deepens our understanding of what happened then, and what it means today. A Circle of Trust is essential reading for all interested in struggles for a more inclusive democracy." Patricia Sullivan, Harvard University "The reminiscences and reflections voiced at the SNCC reunion remind us of the remarkable vision and courageous dedication of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Framed by Cheryl Greenberg's eloquent and probing introduction, the SNCC veterans' comments about the triumphs and limitations of their movement represent a major contribution to the historical literature on race and power in modern America." --Raymond Arsenault, University of South Florida On the occasion of SNCC's twenty-fifth anniversary, more than five hundred people gathered at Trinity College in Connecticut to both celebrate and critique its accomplishments. In A Circle of Trust, forty SNCC members tell their stories and reflect on the contributions, limits, and legacies of the movement. Engaging in spirited debates with each other, with historians of the movement, and with contemporary political culture more broadly, these former and perpetual activists speak of their vision of a just society and what still remains to be done. Given racial tensions and the resurgence of the debate over integration and separatism in America in the 1990s, the content of this conference is more relevant than ever. Cheryl Greeenberg begins with an overview of SNCC and introduces each of the chapters of oral history. Participants explore the origins of SNCC, its early adoption of nonviolent protest, its ultimate renuciation of liberal integration and embrace of militant black radicalism, its refusal to repudiate far-left organizations, and controversies over the roles of women in SNCC and society at large. The result is a thoughtful, moving, if sometimes acrimonious account of one of the nation's most significant civil rights organizations and its successes and failures. Cheryl Lynn Greenberg is associate professor of history at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, and author of "Or Does It Explode?" Black Harlem in the Great Depression.

The Punjab region of India sent more than 600,000 combatants to assist the British war effort during World War I. Their families back home, thousands of miles from the major scenes of battle, were desperate for war news, and newspapers provided daily reports to keep the local population up-to-date with developments on the Western Front. This book presents the first English-language translations of hundreds of articles published during World War I in the newsapers of the Punjab region. They offer a lens into the anxieties and aspirations of Punjabis, a population that committed resources, food, labour as well as combatants to the British war effort. Amidst a steadily growing field of studies on World War I that examine the effects of the war on colonial populations, War News in India makes a unique and timely contribution.

Interested in preserving her family folklore, Jeannie B. Thomas recorded detailed oral histories from her mother and two grandmothers. While analyzing tapes of these sessions, she noticed the way inappropriate laughter often accompanied the retelling of painful stories. The topics of the narratives she recorded include natural disasters, family dissolution, child abuse, sexual harassment, and suicide. In Featherless Chickens, Laughing Women. and Serious Stories, Thomas combines these personal accounts with original scholarship to uncover the meaning behind the startling presence of unconventional laughter in women's histories.

Going beyond conventional theories of humor, Thomas demonstrates how Mikhail Bakhtin's ideas of carnival laughter can apply to narratives about gender and the female body, and she finds in Julia Kristeva's notion of abjection a key to understanding the significance of laughter in a nonhumorous context. The author offers close readings of traumatic subject matter: a child witnessing her aunt attempt suicide with strychnine, a tornado that not only strips the feathers from chickens but compels a husband to leave his wife, a young woman watching her mother and grandmother being institutionalized against their will. The laughter that accompanies some of these stories expresses feelings of horror and the sense that boundaries are being transgressed. By studying the origins of this laughter, she suggests, we can reveal obscured meanings and gain a fuller understanding of painful family narrative.

Thomas offers a fresh perspective on women and laughter that has implications not only for the study of oral histories but for the written word as well. Equal parts solidscholarship and engaging personal narrative, her book is an important contribution to women's studies, folklore studies, and humor theory and should interest a wide academic audience.

"Featherless Chickens, Laughing Women, and Serious Stories provides a rich intersection of personal narrative, gendered experience, and folk tradition. Thomas's application of postmodern theory to the nuances of oral performance in family traditions is one of the most cogent articulations I have ever seen, and her treatment of humor as an index to more complex levels of meaning is fully persuasive. This book represents an impressive stride in the movement toward full utilization of women's perspectives in the discussion of traditional narrative forms". -- Barre Toelken, Utah State University

Ojibwa Narratives presents a fresh view of an early period of Ojibwa thought and ways of life in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and the south shore of Lake Superior. This fascinating collection of fifty-two narratives features, for the first time, the tales of three nineteenth-century Ojibwa storytellers-Charles and Charlotte Kawbawgam and Jaques LePique-collected by Homer H. Kidder. By the late nineteenth century, typical Ojibwa life had been disrupted by the influx of white developers. But these tales reflect a nostalgic view of an earlier period when the heart of Ojibwa semi-nomadic culture remained intact, a time when the fur trade, together with seasonal roving, traditional transportation, and indigenous practices of child rearing, religious thought, art, and music permeated daily life.

Apache Mothers and Daughters, an illustrated family history of four generations of Chiricahua Apache women from 1848 to the present, is an eloquent testimonial to the strength and the stamina of Apache women. Over the course of thirty-five years, anthropologist Ruth McDonald Boyer collected the remembrances of Narcissus Duffy Gayton, great-great-granddaughter of the Apache chief Victorio. This intimate record of Apache life, told from an Apache perspective, highlights the key roles women play in tribal life. The story begins with Dilth-cheyhen, Victorio's daughter, whose life encompassed much of the traditional cultures of the Tchi-hene band of the Chiricahua Apaches. Her daughter, Beshad-e, was just sixteen in 1886 when the twenty-seven-year incarceration of the Chiricahuas began. Beshad-e and her family were forced to move to Florida, Alabama, Oklahoma, and then New Mexico, where the Mescalero Apaches remain today. When Beshad-e's daughter Christine died of tuberculosis in her twenties, she left her daughter Narcissus in Beshad-e's care. After struggling to complete her education, Narcissus returned to serve her tribe as a registered nurse and an advocate for health care. This account documents rituals such as the puberty rite and the cradle-making ceremony, the importance of religion (traditional as well as Anglo) in Apache life, and the intense bond between Apache mothers and daughters.

"The editors... must be congratulated... Long live the African storytellers " Africa Today

"It is difficult to imagine a more practical introduction to contemporary African epic than this anthology... no other single volume comprehends the full scope of African epic (as opposed to praise poetry) the way this one does.... The stories are engaging, and the free-verse translations are surprisingly readable.... Recommended for all academic collections." Choice

Western culture traces its literary heritage to such well-known epics as the Iliad and the Odyssey and Gilgamesh. But it is only recently that scholars have turned their attention toward capturing the rich oral tradition that is still alive in Africa today. These 25 selections introduce English-speaking readers to the extensive epic traditions in Africa."

In Cowboys and Kansas, Jim Hoy educates and entertains us with essays and tales about cowboy life that are based on personal experience, folklore, and history. Introduced to cowboys - famous and obscure, historical and contemporary - we hear them tell about troublesome horses they have ridden, rattlesnakes they have encountered, and outlaws they have met. We experience the details of the cowhand's daily work (roping, counting, and shipping cattle, riding with a trail herd) and play (rodeos, horse races, roping contests, poetry). We meet women drovers, Wild West show riders, and jockeys in a section on cowgirls, and we learn the history of cowboy boots, pants, hats, and saddles.

The Cherokee husband-and-wife team who recorded and translated these folktales in 1961 helped to preserve the lore of seventeen elder Oklahoma Cherokees. This volume includes a wide variety of folklore; talking-animal stories, tales of a dragon-like creature and other monsters, accounts of little people inhabiting the hills of eastern Oklahoma, variants of European tales, fragments of Cherokee mythology and cosmology, and legends and lore of historical personages and events. The authors present the stories exactly as they were told, adding brief comments to place the stories clearly in the context of Cherokee life and thought. Musical notations are included wherever a song formed part of a story.

They hid wherever they could for as long as it took the Allies to win the war -- Jewish children, frightened, alone, often separated from their families. For months, even years, they faced the constant danger of discovery, fabricating new identities at a young age, sacrificing their childhoods to save their lives. These secret survivors have suppressed these painful memories for decades. Now, in The Hidden Children, twenty-three adult survivors share their moving wartime experiences -- some for the first time.
There is Rosa, who hid in an impoverished one-room farmhouse with three others, sleeping on a clay pallet behind a stove; Renee, who posed as a Catholic and was kept in a convent by nuns who knew her secret; and Richard, who lived in a closet with his family for thirteen months. Their personal stories of belief and determination give a voice, at last, to the forgotten. Inspiring and life-affirming, The Hidden Children is an unparalleled document of witness, discovery, and the miracle of human courage.

It is impossible to discuss what shamans are and what they do, contends Gregory G. Maskarinec, without knowing what shamans say. When Maskarinec took an interest in shaman rituals on his first visit to Nepal, he was told by many Nepalis and Westerners that the shamans he had encountered in the Himalayan foothills of western Nepal engaged in "meaningless mumblings." But in the course of several years of fieldwork he learned from the shamans that both their long, publicly chanted rituals and their whispered, secretive incantations are oral texts meticulously memorized through years of training. In The Rulings of the Night, he shows how the shamans, during their dramatic night-long performances, create the worlds of words in which shamans exist. Maskarinec analyzes several complete repertoires of the texts that the shamans use to diagnose and treat afflictions that trouble their clients. Through these texts, they intervene to manipulate and change the world, replacing its unbalanced, inexpressible chaos with orderly, balanced, grammatical, and eloquently expressible states. They negotiate the relations between language, action, and social realities, providing a well-constructed and thoroughly consistent intentional universe-and only in that universe can all shaman actions and beliefs be fully comprehended.

This account of English working-class communities in England from 1940 to 1970 is told through the words and memories of those who lived then. The book is at once vivid, moving and eye-opening.

This was a period of change, usually seen as progress. People everywhere became better off. Healthcare was provided free and the education of children was universal. This was the first age of the domestic machine, releasing women for employment in paid work. The church, the police, teachers and the state became less sources of authority than of care. Television provided entertainment in the home. Improved methods of contraception emancipated sexuality. But, as Elizabeth Roberts shows, the caring state and the privatized family were also accompanied by a diminished sense of community an neighborliness, and by a loss of confidence in previously accepted standards and values in family relationships and the rearing of children.

"Women and Families" provides an always fascinating insight into the realities of social change during three crucial decades of English history. Few of the accepted generalizations - concerning the changing roles of men and women, the loss of working-class solidarity, the decline of family and communal life, the effects of high-rise living, and the benefits of healthcare and social welfare - survive the evidence so ably assembled here. This is an important and exciting book: it will be widely read.

We discover what civil war, revolution and counter-revolution actually felt like from inside both camps. The contours of the war take shape through the words of the eyewitnesses. The atmosphere of events is vividly recaptured. And though the lived experience of the participants is revealed the uniquely tragic essence of all civil war. 'Fascinating and brilliantly unorthodox.' Hugh Thomas, author of THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO.

Spoken word is the Western world's oldest form of literary expression. Spoken word is where poetry begins. Spoken word has changed the world. In 2009, at only twenty years old, Joshua Bennett was invited by President Barack Obama to recite a poem at the White House. With Spike Lee and Saul Williams among the audience, this event turned out to be the very same one where Lin-Manuel Miranda first performed the opening lines of a work-in-progress that revolutionised theatre - Hamilton. With passion, wit and erudition, in Spoken Word Bennett takes us on his own electrifying coming-of-age journey as a writer, alongside the rise of spoken-word poetry and its origins in America. Blending memories of his personal encounters with influential figures, his path to becoming an award-winning poet and his academic insight into the history that shaped the scene, he tells the story of how a handful of visionaries created spaces for underrepresented artists to experiment with new forms of art. Taking us back to the early days of spoken-word poetry through to Amanda Gorman, Common, Jill Scott, Dave Chappelle, DMX and Kanye West reciting their original poems on television, Bennett shows how a few passionate artists sparked a movement that forever changed the world.

Advocating nuclear war, attempting communication with dolphins and taking an interest in the paranormal and UFOs, there is perhaps no greater (or stranger) cautionary tale for the Left than that of Posadism. Named after the Argentine Trotskyist J. Posadas, the movement's journey through the fractious and sectarian world of mid-20th century revolutionary socialism was unique. Although at times significant, Posadas' movement was ultimately a failure. As it disintegrated, it increasingly grew to resemble a bizarre cult, detached from the working class it sought to liberate. The renewed interest in Posadism today - especially for its more outlandish fixations - speaks to both a cynicism towards the past and nostalgia for the earnest belief that a better world is possible. Drawing on considerable archival research, and numerous interviews with ex- and current Posadists, I Want to Believe tells the fascinating story of this most unusual socialist movement and considers why it continues to capture the imaginations of leftists today.

" Richard Lukas's book, encompassing the wartime recollections of sixty "ordinary" Poles under Nazi occupation, constitutes a valuable contribution to a new perspective on World War II. Lukas presents gripping first-person accounts of the years 1939-1945 by Polish Christians from diverse social and economic backgrounds. Their narratives, from both oral and written sources, contribute enormously to our understanding of the totality of the Holocaust. Many of those who speak in these pages attempted, often at extreme peril, to assist Jewish friends, neighbors, and even strangers who otherwise faced certain death at the hands of the German occupiers. Some took part in the underground resistance movement. Others, isolated from the Jews' experience and ill informed of that horror, were understandably preoccupied with their own survival in the face of brutal condition intended ultimately to exterminate or enslave the entire Polish population. These recollections of men and women are moving testimony to the human courage of a people struggling for survival against the rule of depravity. The power of their painful witness against the inhumanities of those times is undeniable.

In 1949, Ireland left the Commonwealth and the British Empire began its long fragmentation. The relationship between the new Republic of Ireland and Britain was a complex one however, and the traditional assumption that the Republic would universally support self-determination overseas and object to 'imperialism' does not hold up to historical scrutiny. In reality, for economic and geopolitical reasons, the Republic of Ireland played an important role in supporting the Empire- demonstrated clearly in Ireland's active involvement in the Cyprus Emergency of the 1950s. As Helen O'Shea reveals, while the IRA formed immediate links with EOKA and the Cypriot rebels, the Irish government and the Irish Church supported the British line- which was to retain Cyprus as the Middle-Eastern base of the British Empire following the loss of Egypt. Ireland and the End of the British Empire challenges the received historiography of the period and constitutes a valuable addition to our understanding of Ireland and the British Empire.

More than a mode of gathering information about the past, oral history has become an international movement. Historians, folklorists, and other educational and religious groups now recognize the importance of preserving the recollections of people about the past. The recorded memories of famous and common folk alike provide a vital complement to textbook history, bringing the past to life through the stories of those who lived it.

Oral History is designed to introduce teachers, students, and interested individuals to the techniques, problems, and pleasures of collecting oral history. The authors, themselves experienced educators, examine the uses of oral history in the classroom, looking at a wide range of projects that have been attempted and focusing on those that have succeeded best.

Besides suggesting many possible projects, they discuss the necessary hardware and its use: recording equipment and procedures, interview outlines and preliminary research, photography and note-taking in the field, transcription and storage of information, legal forms, and more. For the teacher, the authors offer helpful advice on training students to be sensitive interviewers in both formal and informal situations.

How can oral histories collected in the classroom be put to use? The authors discuss their uses within the curriculum; in projects such as oral history archives, publications such as the popular Foxfire books, and other media productions; and in researching current community problems. Useful appendixes survey a variety of reference tools for the oral historian and describe in detail how a Foxfire-concept magazine may be developed.

Many defenders of slavery have maintained that the slaves in Texas were well-treated and happy, but as a former slave remarked, ""Tisn't he who has stood and looked on, that can tell you what slavery is - 'tis he who has endured."" Here are the tales of those who have endured - a collection of the voices of the ex-slaves themselves, recalling what their lives were like under slavery. Over one hundred former slaves describe their slavemasters, their work, runaway slaves, their recollections of the Civil War and, finally, the coming of freedom. The narratives were collected by WPA interviewers in the late 1930s and subsequently edited by Ron Tyler and Lawrence R. Murphy. ""The Slave Narratives of Texas"" is a highly informative and readable book that provides a valuable history of the institution of slavery in Texas. It is also a profoundly moving text that yields great insight into the full impact of slavery upon human lives.

Few cultural activities speak more powerfully to international histories of the modern world than football. In the late nineteenth century, this cheap and simple sport emerged as a major legacy of Britain's formal and informal empires and spread quickly across Europe, South America, and Africa. Today, football (known to many as soccer) is arguably the world's most popular pastime, an activity played and watched by millions of people around the globe. Contested Fields introduces readers to key aspects of the global game, synthesizing research on football's transnational role in reflecting and shaping political, socio-economic, and cultural developments over the past 150 years. Each chapter uses case studies and cutting-edge scholarship to analyze an important element of football's international story: migration, money, competition, gender, race, space, spectatorship, and confrontation.

'An extraordinary book . . . vivid and heart-breaking' The Jewish Chronicle Through the discovery of a precious friendship album which belonged to 12-year-old Alie, a Jewish schoolgirl in Amsterdam, Claudia Carli has traced and preserved the lives of an entire class of girls, most of whom did not survive the War. Alie and her friends are brought touchingly and vividly to life, along with their writings, in this extraordinary book. Their everyday hopes, pleasures and longings are offset by the constant fear of a knock on the door, a missing friend from class, a family member taken away. Alie and her mother were to die in Sobibor in 1943. Alie's sister Gretha survived Auschwitz and kept her promise to her sister to preserve the friendship album so long as she hoped to live. This book will sit alongside Anne Frank's diary and The Cutout Girl as a unique window into occupied Amsterdam and the girls who will now never be forgotten.

***** 'There have been many books written about the events of Bloody Sunday, however, none has wrenched the reader as violently back to those CS gas-choked streets, dumping them right in the heart of the screaming, running, shooting and crying, as Julieann Campbell's On Bloody Sunday. A powerful chronicle of one of the darkest episodes of modern times.' - Sunday Times 'Powerful and moving ... The strength of this important new book lies in the artistry the author brings to the tasks of portraying both the community upon which the massacre was perpetrated, and the individuals within it.' - Irish Times 'Meticulous.... On Bloody Sunday possesses a veracity and cumulative power that sets it apart from previous accounts' - Observer 'A momentous chronicle, timely and vital, which highlights that the burden of change rests, as always, upon the shoulders of those who suffered and yet, have nurtured the desire that lessons be learned.' - Michael Mansfield QC, who represented a number of families during the Bloody Sunday Inquiry. 'It is a vital record of the time, the city, and its people, and more impressive still it does so almost entirely in their own words, their heartbreak, their anger, their resilience, their humour. Julieann Campbell has given their voices, so long silenced, the dignity they deserve. It is a staggering achievement.' - Seamas O'Reilly 'It's a wonderful book. The technique used - multiple voices speaking directly to us - is very simple but it has a profound effect. It puts us into the middle of the chaos of Bloody Sunday and keeps us there throughout the grief and anger that follow. A wonderful, wonderful book.' - Jimmy McGovern, BAFTA winning screenwriter, creator of 'Sunday' (2002) In January 1972, a peaceful civil rights march in Northern Ireland ended in bloodshed. Troops from Britain's 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment opened fire on marchers, leaving 13 dead and 15 wounded. Seven of those killed were teenage boys. The day became known as 'Bloody Sunday'. The events occurred in broad daylight and in the full glare of the press. Within hours, the British military informed the world that they had won an 'IRA gun battle'. This became the official narrative for decades until a family-led campaign instigated one of the most complex inquiries in history. In 2010, the victims of Bloody Sunday were fully exonerated when Lord Saville found that the majority of the victims were either shot in the back as they ran away or were helping someone in need. The report made headlines all over the world. While many buried the trauma of that day, historian and campaigner Juliann Campbell - whose teenage uncle was the first to be killed that day - felt the need to keep recording these interviews, and collecting rare and unpublished accounts, aware of just how precious they were. Fifty years on, in this book, survivors, relatives, eyewitnesses and politicians, shine a light on the events of Bloody Sunday, together, for the first time. As they tell their stories, the tension, confusion and anger build with an awful power. ON BLOODY SUNDAY unfolds before us an extraordinary human drama, as we experience one of the darkest moments in modern history - and witness the true human cost of conflict.

The 1970s were the era of the three-day week, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the winter of discontent, trade union Bolshevism and wildcat strikes. Through sitcoms, Raising Laughter provides a fresh look at one of our most divisive and controversial decades. Aside from providing entertainment to millions of people, the sitcom is a window into the culture of the day. Many of these sitcoms tapped into the decade's sense of cynicism, failure and alienation, providing much-needed laughter for the masses. Shows like Rising Damp and Fawlty Towers were classic encapsulations of worn-out, run-down Britain, while the likes of Dad's Army looked back sentimentally at a romanticised English past. For the first time, the stories behind the making of every sitcom from the 1970s are told by the actors, writers, directors and producers who made them all happen. This is nostalgia with a capital N, an oral history, the last word, and an affectionate salute to the kind of comedy programme that just isn't made anymore.

After 1933, as the brutal terror regime took hold, most of the two-thirds of Germans who had never voted for the Nazis - some 20 million people - tried to keep their heads down and protect their families. They moved to the country, or pretended to support the regime to avoid being denounced by neighbours, and tried to work out what was really happening in the Reich, surrounded as they were by Nazi propaganda and fake news. They lived in constant fear. Yet many ordinary Germans found the courage to resist. Catrine Clay argues that it was a much greater number than was ever formally recorded. Her ground-breaking book focuses on six very different characters. They are not seen in isolation but as part of their families. Each experiences the momentous events of Nazi history as they unfold in their own small lives - Good Germans all.

Discover a powerful collection of the hardships, hairbreadth escapes, and mortal struggles of enslaved people seeking freedom: These are the true stories of the Underground Railroad.

A secret network of safe houses, committees and guides that stretched well below the Mason-Dixon Line into the brutal slave states of the American South, the Underground Railroad remains one of the most impressive and well-organised resistance movements in modern history. It facilitated the escape of over 30,000 slave 'passengers' through America and into Canada during its peak years of 1850-60, and, in total, an estimated 100,000 slaves found their freedom through the network.

Abridged from William Still's The Underground Railroad Records - an epic historical document that chronicles the first-hand stories of American slaves who escaped to freedom via the Underground Railroad - Passengers tells of the secret methods, risks and covert sacrifices that were made to liberate so many from slavery. From tales of men murdered in cold blood for their part in helping assist runaways and terrifyingly tense descriptions of stowaways and dramatic escape plans, to stories of families reunited and the moments of absurdity that the Underground Railroad forced its 'passengers' to sometimes endure, Still's narratives testify to the humanity of this vast enterprise.