Bøger af William Grimes

William Grimes (1784-1865) was the son of Benjamin Grymes, the rich owner of a plantation in King James County, Virginia, and an enslaved servant of Grymes's neighbor, a Dr. Steward. William Grimes served at least ten different masters in Virginia, Maryland, and Georgia, working in such varied positions as house servant, valet, field worker, stable boy, and coachman. He was a light-skinned slave, a fact that enabled him to pass as white on various occasions. Oftentimes he was severely mistreated by both his masters and his fellow slaves, and Grimes also endured physical abuse in the house and in the field, and at times became combative or despondent. He escaped slavery in 1814 by stowing away on a ship bound for New York and became an entrepreneur in New England. He eventually settled in New Haven, Connecticut, and married Clarissa Caesar in 1817. They had eighteen children together, twelve of whom survived. After eventually finding a small measure of success, Grimes lost all of his property when his master discovered his location and forced him to buy his freedom or risk being returned to slavery. Grimes wrote the Life of William Grimes and published it in 1825, hoping to regain some of his lost funds. He published a second edition of his autobiography in 1855, updating it with humorous anecdotes and tempering some of his earlier bitterness. Grimes died in August 1865. The Life of William Grimes was the first book-length autobiography written by a fugitive American slave, and its publication. Furthermore, The Life of William Grimes is an important early text in the slave narrative genre, and it provides a raw and engaging first-hand account of the institution of slavery, unmediated by Abolitionist political aims.

This is a story about the relationship between an old man and a red-tailed hawk that fell from its nest and how he saved the hawk from being eaten by a six-foot-long rattlesnake and how the hawk was able to return the favor by saving the old man's life.The old man, born in the 1900s and raised on a farm in Wakulla County, Florida, was not a big fan of the red-tailed hawks. The common name of a red-tailed hawk is a chicken hawk because they are known to kill and eat small chickens, a farmer's worst nightmare.The story also shares with the reader how, over the next twenty-five years, the hawk and the old man built an everlasting bond that surprised the old man's wife and their children, a bond that could not be broken even in death.My reason for writing this book was to show the reader that we are all God's children and that each one of us has a chance to do and become anything we want to do if we work hard and long enough, and with God's help, we will achieve whatever we want to do in life.

The Life of William Grimes offers an eye-opening account of a life during and after slavery, written by a man who experienced and witnessed the worst.Unlike other slave memoirs, The Life of William Grimes has not been sanitized or otherwise edited for the benefit of what, at the time, was a mostly white readership. The tone set by Grimes in his recollections is one of bitter resentment and indignation at an experience which was demeaning, physically and mentally torturing, and an insult to his very humanity. Intelligent and perceptive, it was only through luck and trusting his own wits that William was able to escape his enslavement. The son of a white plantation owner and a black mother who worked as his father's slave, Grimes variously worked around the plantation grounds as a coach driver, stable boy, and in the fields.

The Life of William Grimes offers an eye-opening account of a life during and after slavery, written by a man who experienced and witnessed the worst.Unlike other slave memoirs, The Life of William Grimes has not been sanitized or otherwise edited for the benefit of what, at the time, was a mostly white readership. The tone set by Grimes in his recollections is one of bitter resentment and indignation at an experience which was demeaning, physically and mentally torturing, and an insult to his very humanity. Intelligent and perceptive, it was only through luck and trusting his own wits that William was able to escape his enslavement. The son of a white plantation owner and a black mother who worked as his father's slave, Grimes variously worked around the plantation grounds as a coach driver, stable boy, and in the fields.