Preview of From Slave Ship to Freedom Road Summary:

Julius Lester writes about the slave experience in From Slave Ship to Freedom Road. In a very personal work, he urges himself and the reader to ask penetrating questions about man's treatment of his fellow man. He asks the question, What was it like to be a slave?

He asks the reader to be introspective. The text addresses the emotions, behaviors, and events depicted in the paintings of Rod Brown.

Brown's thirty-six paintings, executed in acrylics, provide the stimulus for the questions that provoke the reader to respond.

The paintings are vivid and filled with powerful emotion. They are historically accurate and may be startling to the reader at first glance. Lester leads the reader through the slave experience beginning with the transport aboard three-masted ships, to the auction block in ports in the South, and on to the plantation owners' fields, where they suffer from the hard...