Susanna Ashton

Born enslaved, John Andrew Jackson spent his life fighting for freedom as a fugitive, abolitionist, lecturer and writer.

The images, diaries, and ephemera in Grand Valley State University’s Civil War and Slavery Collection reveal the cold realities of Abraham Lincoln’s world.

The bonfire was a public spectacle for Black people, as well as any white dissenters. It was a calculated warning.

There are revelations in a newly digitized collection of slave narratives compiled by a professor and his students during the Great Depression.