<b>&quot;An excellent account of the many ways in which slaves participated in bringing down the greatest evil in our nation's history.&quot; - KIRKUS REVIEWS (starred review)</b><br><br>A man who cannot swim leaps off a slave ship into the dark water. A girl defies the law by secretly learning to read and write. A future abolitionist regains his will to live by fighting off his captor with his bare hands: &quot;I will not let you use me like a brute any longer,&quot; Frederick Douglass vows. Drawing from authentic accounts, here is a chronology of resistance in all its forms: comical trickster tales about outwitting &quot;Old Marsa&quot;; secret &quot;hush harbors&quot; where Africans instill Christian worship with their own rituals; and spirituals such as &quot;Go Down Moses,&quot; whose coded lyrics signal not just hope for deliverance, but an active call to escape. <br><br>Boldly illustrated with extraordinary oil paintings by award-winning artist Shane W. Evans, and meticulously researched by Doreen Rappaport, this stunning collection - spanning the period from the early days of slavery to the Emancipation Proclamation - is an invaluable resource for teachers, parents, libraries, students, and people everywhere who care about what it means to be free, what it is to be human.