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My Journey to Find the Children of Slaves
The Lyons Press
February 2009
On Sale: January 23, 2009
256 pages ISBN: 1599213753 EAN: 9781599213750 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Sugar of the Crop tells the story of an unprecedented quest
to find the last surviving children of slaves. In a
revealing journey that takes her from Los Angeles to
Louisiana, from a Harlem church to a Virginia nursing home,
Sana Butler paints a fascinating picture of freed slaves as
husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, and tells the
story of how they raised children after the Civil War.
Drawing on a decade of interviews with centenarians whose
parents were slaves, Butler reveals how African Americans
emerged from slavery with a powerful drive to put the past
behind and a deep commitment to make the most of their
opportunities, large and small. Like immigrants, freed
slaves faced a new America with hopes and dreams for their
children and the nation’s future. Impelled by a generation
that exercised political power at a rate never again seen
in this country, the sons and daughters were raised to be
independent and often fearless thinkers, laying the
groundwork for what would later become the Civil Rights
Movement.
Through one of the most important new explorations of
African American history in recent memory, Butler tells a
profound story of our past and present from a perspective
never seen before. Not since the Works Progress
Administration gathered slave narratives during the Great
Depression has a journalist conducted such in-depth primary
interviews into this epic period in America’s history.
Underlying the story of her bittersweet devotion to finding
a generation everyone told her was long dead is Butler’s
even more personal story—that of her father struggling with
a rare cancer, holding on just long enough to watch his
daughters grow up. Collecting priceless oral histories and
seeking answers to questions about her own family tree,
Butler offers a penetrating and controversial new
perspective on the seemingly well known and documented
story of slavery and its slaves. In so doing, she turns
history as we know it upside down.
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