For this unit your research will focus on the role of literature in raising awareness and furthering the mission of the human rights movement. The first international human rights movement, the antislavery crusade, pioneered the tactics adopted by activists in every successive generation right down to the present day. The development of relatively cheap printing processes and the transportation revolution that made mass distribution of materials possible enabled abolitionists, black and white, to fight their battle by using the power of language: poetry and songs, stories and novels, slave narratives and autobiographies, essays and newspaper articles, in short, virtually every known form of literature. Their words had the power to jar readers from their comfortable worlds and pull them into powerful dramas they had never before imagined.  The following suggestions offer a variety of approaches to research this subject.

            It is important to understand that the literature of slavery times began in the oral folklore of an illiterate people. Just as the visual arts create a sense of cultural identity, the stories that a people repeat for generations, provide a means of creative expression and community cohesion. In spite of the violence and oppression of slavery, a rich and expressive culture developed among African Americans, one that has left a lasting legacy. You may want to explore this legacy or to consider the ties between African and African American folklore.

            By the late 18th and early 19th centuries, some African Americans had achieved literacy and were beginning to produce a literature of their own. While they contributed to a variety of genres, including poetry, novels, and essays, by far the most popular and powerful literature of the era was the slave narrative. By telling the story of slavery from the inside, these accounts captured the imagination of countless readers, and still have the power to move us today. Indeed, these accounts have been among the most influential genres in all of American literature. Any one of these narratives is an apt subject for review.

            The institution of slavery also had a powerful impact on white writers of the antebellum period. Abolitionists wrote intense attacks on the system for their newspapers and polemical tracts, but they also produced novels, poems, and stories, some of enduring quality and value.

           Another interesting approach to this unit is to study the post-Civil War impact of slavery on literature. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the development of a number of brilliant African American writers, all of whom commented at some level on the legacy of slavery. Finally, you might want to look at the work of contemporary writers who still return to the subject.

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