Paying Freedom's Price provides a comprehensive yet brief and readable history of the role of African Americans—both slave and free—from the decade leading

Eliza Scott isn't quite a slave, but she's not free either. She's not a prisoner, but her family lives in a jail. Eliza, who attends a secret floating school on

Christine Hünefeldt documents in impressive, moving detail the striving and ingenuity, the hard-won triumphs and bitter defeats of slaves who sought liberation

When John Price took a chance at freedom by crossing the frozen Ohio river from Kentucky into Ohio one January night in 1856, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was