Uses slave narratives, letters, diaries, military orders, and other documents to chronicle the various stages leading to the emancipation of slaves in the United States.

In 1619, twenty Africans stepped foot on American soil. They came not as slaves, but as indentured servants knowing that if they could hold on and finish out their sentences, they would be free. They came with dreams of the future and a vision of life as good as any other person's, black or white. Who were these people? How did they get here? What happened to them? Much of the information and stories about them are incomplete, even their names have...

Brought up in France as the African slave companion of a nobleman's daughter, thirteen-year-old Zettie records the events of 1763, when she and her mistress escape to the New World where they are inadvertently drawn into the hostilities of the ongoing French and Indian War and, eventually, find a new direction to their lives.