"Setting out to correct the inadequacies of many written accounts of slavery, teacher and social activist Octavia Albert added her own incisive commentary to the personal narratives of former slaves. Her early interviews, like many antebellum slave narratives, depict cruel punishments, divided families, and debilitating labour. Seeing herself as a public advocate for social change, Albert called for every Christian's personal acceptance of responsibility for slavery's legacies and lessons. As well as its historical value, the book has many merits as a work of literature, using dialogue and experiments with dialect, and incorporating songs and poems in the text"-- Publisher's description.

Originally published: New York : Hunt & Eaton, 1890. Previously published: 1926.

. Charlotte Brooks. Causes of immorality among colored people ; Charlotte Brooks ; She is sold South ; Sunday work -- II. Charlotte's story. Meeting Jane Lee from Virginia ; Conversion of Charlotte Brooks -- III. Aunt Charlotte's friends. Death of Aunt Charlotte's children ; Jane Lee's master leaves the neighborhood ; Nellie Johnson tries to escape to her old Virginia home -- IV. Cruel masters. Nellie Johnson is barbarously treated ; Sam Wilson living in the swamps of Louisiana ; Richard's wife living on another plantation ; His master refuses to allow him to visit her ; Caught by patrollers and beaten almost to death -- V. Great tribulations. The death of Lena ; Her dying testimony ; Aunt Charlotte's mistress ties a servant by the thumbs ; She returns and finds her dead -- VI. A kind mistress. Death of Aunt Charlotte's mistress ; Second marriage of her master ; George beaten nearly to death and one of his eyes put out for being overheard talking about freedom -- VII. Broken-down freedmen. Aunt Charlotte splitting in Sunday-School Sims, a runaway, sleeping in the woods with rattle-snake ; Eating out of trash-boxes -- VIII. The curse of whisky. The Methodist Episcopal Church ; The colored people and whisky-drinking ; When the Yankees came to Louisiana ; The end of Aunt Charlotte's story -- IX. John and Lorendo. Work to be done ; John Goodwin and Lorendo, his wife ; Uncle John's little brother washed away by the rain -- X. A converted Catholic. Going to church on Sunday in Georgia ; Ill treatment of Uncle John's daughter ; Aunt Lorendo's second visit ; Her conversion from Romanism ; Her Cousin Albert to be hung ; Hattie runs away and gives birth to a child in the woods -- XI. Prison horrors. Uncle John taking lessons ; Andersonville horrors ; Blood-hounds ; Silas bitten by blood-hounds and eaten by buzzards -- XII. Sallie Smith's story. Sallie Smith living in the woods ; Death of her mother ; The ill-treatment she suffered -- XIII. In the woods. Aunt Sallie's cruel treatment, continued ; Her brother Warren runs away and joins her in the woods -- XIV. Uncle Stephen Jordon -- XV. Counterfeit free papers -- XVI. Uncle Cephas's story: ... Underground railroad ; Cato becomes a soldier, a senator, a congressman -- XVII. A colored soldier: Colonel Douglass Wilson ; Color-bearer Planchiancio and Captain Caillioux ; Joel Brinkley -- XVIII. Negro government: Kuklux ; Black laws ; Reconstruction ; Colored men in constitutional conventions and state legislatures ; Lieutenant-Governor Dunn ; Antoine Dubuclet ; Emigration and colonization -- XIX. The colored delegates: The Methodist General Conference of 1888 -- XX. A touching incident: Cotton Centennial Expostition of 1884.