The Underground Railroad (novel)
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The Underground Railroad (novel)
''The Underground Railroad'' is a historical fiction novel by American author Colson Whitehead, published by Doubleday in 2016. The alternate history novel tells the story of Cora, a slave in the Antebellum South during the 19th century, who makes a bid for freedom from her Georgia plantation by following the Underground Railroad, which the novel depicts as a rail transport system with safe houses and secret routes. The book was a critical and commercial success, hitting the bestseller lists and winning several literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Award for Fiction, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. A TV miniseries adaptation, written and directed by Barry Jenkins, was released in May 2021. Plot The book alternates between the perspective of the lead character, Cora, and chapters told from a different character's perspective. The featured characters are: Ajarry, Cora's grandmother; Ridgeway, a ...
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Colson Whitehead
Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead (born November 6, 1969) is an American novelist. He is the author of eight novels, including his 1999 debut work '' The Intuitionist''; '' The Underground Railroad'' (2016), for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction again in 2020 for '' The Nickel Boys''. He has also published two books of non-fiction. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Genius Grant. Life Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead was born in New York City on November 6, 1969, and grew up in Manhattan. He is one of four children of successful entrepreneur parents who owned an executive recruiting firm. As a child in Manhattan, Whitehead went by his first name Arch. He later switched to Chipp, before switching to Colson. He attended Trinity School in Manhattan and graduated from Harvard University in 1991. In college, he became friends with poet Kevin Young. Early in his career, Whitehead lived in Fort Gr ...
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North Carolina
North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and South Carolina to the south, and Tennessee to the west. In the 2020 census, the state had a population of 10,439,388. Raleigh is the state's capital and Charlotte is its largest city. The Charlotte metropolitan area, with a population of 2,595,027 in 2020, is the most-populous metropolitan area in North Carolina, the 21st-most populous in the United States, and the largest banking center in the nation after New York City. The Raleigh-Durham-Cary combined statistical area is the second-largest metropolitan area in the state and 32nd-most populous in the United States, with a population of 2,043,867 in 2020, and is home to the largest research park in the United States, Research Triangle Park. The earliest evidence of human occupation i ...
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Appian Way
The Appian Way (Latin and Italian language, Italian: ''Via Appia'') is one of the earliest and strategically most important Roman roads of the ancient Roman Republic, republic. It connected Rome to Brindisi, in southeast Italy. Its importance is indicated by its common name, recorded by Statius, of ("the Appian Way, the queen of the long roads"). The road is named after Appius Claudius Caecus, the Roman censor who began and completed the first section as a military road to the south in 312 BC"Appian Way" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes Ltd, George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 490. during the Samnite Wars. Origins The need for roads The Appian Way was a Roman road used as a main route for military supplies for its conquest of southern Italy in 312 BC and for improvements in communication. The Appian Way was the first long road built specifically to transport troops outside the smaller region of greater Rome (this was essential to the Romans). The few ro ...
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Tages-Anzeiger
''Tages-Anzeiger'' (), also abbreviated ''Tagi'' or ''TA'', is a Swiss German-language national daily newspaper published in Zurich, Switzerland. History and profile The paper was first published under the name ''Tages-Anzeiger für Stadt und Kanton Zürich'' in 1893. The founder was a German, Wilhelm Girardet. Its current name, ''Tages-Anzeiger'', was adopted later. The paper is based in Zurich and is published in broadsheet. Its owner and publisher is Tamedia and its editor is Res Strehle. Although ''Tages-Anzeiger'' is a national newspaper, it focuses mainly on the Zurich region. Circulation The circulation of ''Tages-Anzeiger'' was 70,000 copies in 1910. It rose to 83,000 copies in 1930 and to 116,000 copies in 1950. In the period of 1995–1996 ''Tages-Anzeiger'' had a circulation of 282,222 copies, making it the second best-selling paper in the country. In 1997 its circulation was 283,139 copies. The circulation of the paper was 280,000 copies in 2000. ''Tages-Anzeiger' ...
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Harriet Jacobs
Harriet Jacobs (1813 or 1815 – March 7, 1897) was an African-American writer whose autobiography, ''Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl'', published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is now considered an "American classic". Born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina, she was sexually harassed by her enslaver. When he threatened to sell her children if she did not submit to his desire, she hid in a tiny crawl space under the roof of her grandmother's house, so low she could not stand up in it. After staying there for seven years, she finally managed to escape to the free North, where she was reunited with her children Joseph and Louisa Matilda and her brother John S. Jacobs. She found work as a nanny and got into contact with abolitionist and feminist reformers. Even in New York, her freedom was in danger until her employer was able to pay off her legal owner. During and immediately after the Civil War, she went to the Union-occupied parts of the South together wi ...
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Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 1817 or 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography. Douglass wrote three autobiographies, describing his experiences as a slave in his ''Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave'' (1845), which became a bestseller and was influential in promoting t ...
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Hoosier
Hoosier is the official demonym for the people of the U.S. state of Indiana. The origin of the term remains a matter of debate, but "Hoosier" was in general use by the 1840s, having been popularized by Richmond resident John Finley's 1833 poem "The Hoosier's Nest". Anyone born in Indiana or a resident at the time is considered to be a Hoosier. Indiana adopted the nickname "The Hoosier State" more than 150 years ago. "Hoosier" is used in the names of numerous Indiana-based businesses and organizations. "Hoosiers" is also the name of the Indiana University athletic teams. As there is no accepted embodiment of a Hoosier, the IU schools are represented through their letters and colors alone. In addition to universal acceptance by residents of Indiana, the term is also the official demonym according to the U.S. Government Publishing Office. Origin In addition to "The Hoosier's Nest", the term also appeared in the ''Indianapolis Journal'''s "Carrier's Address" on January 1, 1833. Ther ...
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Freedmen
A freedman or freedwoman is a formerly enslaved person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, enslaved people were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their captor-owners), abolitionism, emancipation (granted freedom as part of a larger group), or self-purchase. A fugitive slave is a person who escaped enslavement by fleeing. Ancient Rome Rome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become Plebs, plebeian citizens. The act of freeing a slave was called ''manumissio'', from ''manus'', "hand" (in the sense of holding or possessing something), and ''missio'', the act of releasing. After manumission, a slave who had belonged to a Roman citizen enjoyed not only passive freedom from ownership, but active political freedom ''(libertas)'', including the right to vote. A slave who had acquired ''libertas'' was known as a ''libertus'' ("freed person", grammatical gender, feminine ''liberta'') in relation to his former master, ...
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Indentured Servant
Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an " indenture", may be entered "voluntarily" for purported eventual compensation or debt repayment, or it may be imposed as a judicial punishment. Historically, it has been used to pay for apprenticeships, typically when an apprentice agreed to work for free for a master tradesman to learn a trade (similar to a modern internship but for a fixed length of time, usually seven years or less). Later it was also used as a way for a person to pay the cost of transportation to colonies in the Americas. Like any loan, an indenture could be sold; most employers had to depend on middlemen to recruit and transport the workers so indentures (indentured workers) were commonly bought and sold when they arrived at their destinations. Like prices of slaves, their price went up or down depending on supply and demand. When the indenture (loan) was paid ...
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Syphilis
Syphilis () is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium ''Treponema pallidum'' subspecies ''pallidum''. The signs and symptoms of syphilis vary depending in which of the four stages it presents (primary, secondary, latent, and tertiary). The primary stage classically presents with a single chancre (a firm, painless, non-itchy skin ulceration usually between 1 cm and 2 cm in diameter) though there may be multiple sores. In secondary syphilis, a diffuse rash occurs, which frequently involves the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. There may also be sores in the mouth or vagina. In latent syphilis, which can last for years, there are few or no symptoms. In tertiary syphilis, there are gummas (soft, non-cancerous growths), neurological problems, or heart symptoms. Syphilis has been known as "the great imitator" as it may cause symptoms similar to many other diseases. Syphilis is most commonly spread through sexual activity. It may also be transmi ...
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Tuskegee Syphilis Study
The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male (informally referred to as the Tuskegee Experiment or Tuskegee Syphilis Study) was a study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on a group of nearly 400 African Americans with syphilis. The purpose of the study was to observe the effects of the disease when untreated, though by the end of the study medical advancements meant it was entirely treatable. The men were not informed of the nature of the experiment, and more than 100 died as a result. The Public Health Service started the study in 1932 in collaboration with Tuskegee University (then the Tuskegee Institute), a historically Black college in Alabama. In the study, investigators enrolled a total of 600 impoverished African-American sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama. Of these men, 399 had latent syphilis, with a control group of 201 men who were not infected. ...
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Tubal Ligation
Tubal ligation (commonly known as having one's "tubes tied") is a surgical procedure for female sterilization in which the fallopian tubes are permanently blocked, clipped or removed. This prevents the fertilization of eggs by sperm and thus the implantation of a fertilized egg. Tubal ligation is considered a permanent method of sterilization and birth control. Medical uses Female sterilization through tubal ligation is primarily used to permanently prevent a patient from having a spontaneous pregnancy (as opposed to pregnancy via in vitro fertilization) in the future. While both hysterectomy (the removal of the uterus) or bilateral oophorectomy (the removal of both ovaries) can also accomplish this goal, these surgeries carry generally greater health risks than tubal ligation procedures. Less commonly, tubal ligation procedures may also be performed for patients who are known to be carriers of mutations in genes that increase the risk of ovarian and fallopian tube cancer ...
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