Bøger af Margo Lee Williams

Although antebellum African Americans were sometimes allowed to attend Quaker services, they were almost never admitted to full "meeting" membership, as was Miles Lassiter. His story illuminates the unfolding of the 19th-century color line into the 20th. It reminds us that, while traditional texts recount grand events, true history tells of everyday people who do extraordinary things quietly, not even realizing that they have left their mark.Margo Williams had only a handful of stories and a few names her mother remembered from her childhood about her family's home in Asheboro, North Carolina. Her research would soon help her to make contact with long lost relatives and a pilgrimage "home" with her mother in 1982. Little did she know she would discover a large loving family and a Quaker ancestor--a Black Quaker ancestor. This story follows her research journey through records and Carolina countryside as she uncovers her roots.

In 1879, Islay Walden, born enslaved and visually impaired, returned to North Carolina after a twelve-year odyssey in search of an education. It was a journey that would take him from emancipation in Randolph County, North Carolina to Washington, D. C., where he earned a teaching degree from Howard University, then to the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Along the way, he would publish two volumes of poetry and found two schools for African American children. Now ordained, he would return to his home community, where he founded two Congregational churches and common schools. Despite an early death at age forty, he would leave an educational and spiritual legacy that endures to this day. Born Missionary uses Walden's own words as well as newspaper reports and church publications to follow his journey from enslavement to teacher, ordained minister, missionary, and community leader.