December 24, 1853 Octavia Victoria Rogers Albert was born enslaved in Oglethorpe, Georgia. Albert was emancipated after the Civil War and attended Atlanta University where she studied to be a teacher. In 1874, she moved to Louisiana where she began to conduct interviews with men and women once enslaved. These narratives became the material for “The House of Bondage, or, Charlotte Brooks and Other Slaves.” The book was published in 1891 shortly after Albert’s death in 1890. Her goal in writing the book was to tell the story of the ex-enslaved as well as to “correct and create history.”
CHRISTMAS Eve