ABSTRACT
Certain images present themselves at the mention of antebellum slavery: tree-lined promenades leading to white-columned mansions sweltering in the cotton lands of the South; raised scars crisscrossing a brown back; artists' drawings of slave ships, floating bunk-bed prisons where humans were packed like coffins; mad eyes of a leering white man, whip in one hand, looming over a frightened black woman whose own eyes hold no hope at all. Read the narratives of former slaves, and you will know why we see these things. They happened.
