by Patrick Minges
Real Voices, Real History Series
“This book is an important contribution to the dialogue about the relationships between African Americans and Native Americans, and the complex political context in which these narratives were recorded. Patrick does not overanalyze this often emotional subject. He simply allows the people to tell their stories.”
Wilma Mankiller
Few people realize that Native Americans were enslaved right alongside the African Americans in this country. Fewer still realize that many Native Americans owned African Americans and Native Americans from other tribes. From the interviews with former slaves that were collected by the Federal Writers’ Project during the 1930s, this volume offers 27 of the most absorbing firsthand testimonies about African American and Native American relationships in the 19th century.
PATRICK MINGES worked for 17 years for Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. While pursuing his doctorate at Union Theological Seminary, he became interested in the struggles of the Cherokees in the South. He is the author of Slavery in the Cherokee Nation: The Keetoowah Society and the Defining of a People, 1855-1867.
(from the back cover)