Liberty Street
By Candice F. Ransom; Eric Velasquez (Illustrator)
(Walker Books for Young Readers, Hardcover, 9780802788696, 32pp.)
Publication Date: October 2003
Other Editions of This Title: Library Binding (October 2003)
Categories: Historical - United States - 19th Century, People & Places - United States - African-American
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Kezia’s secret Sundays have the power to set her free.
I was born on wash day.
“Did you have to work that day?” I once asked Mama.
“Our people work every day, Kezia,” she said.
They must work all week except on Sunday afternoons, when Missus Grace’s slaves are free to travel through town and visit with friends. Glorious Sundays, when slaves throughout Fredericksburg walk along the dirt path they call Liberty Street, making small journeys that give them the only taste of freedom they can ever have.
Soon Sundays take on an even deeper meaning when Kezia joins a secret school to learn to read—even though it is forbidden to slaves. Meanwhile, Mama works frantically to earn extra money to buy Kezia’s freedom from Missus Grace before she is bonded out to another family far away.
Liberty Street is a moving story of courage and love, and a testament to those in the antebellum South who risked all in the name of knowledge and freedom.
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