New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (1998.) dj. Hardcover first edition - The author's first book, winner of the 1998 National Book Award. From the dj flap: this "is the story of one man's exploration of his family's slave-owning past and his search for the descendants of the people his family kept as slaves. In 1698, Elias Ball traveled from his home in Devon, England, to Charleston, Carolina to take possession of his inheritance: part of a plantation and twenty slaves. Elias and his progeny built an American dynasty that lasted six generations, acquiring more than twenty plantations along the Cooper River near Charleston, selling rice known as Carolina Gold, and enslaving close to four thousand Africans and African-Americans until 1865, when Union troops arrived on the lawns of Balls' estates to force emancipation. ... A nonfiction American saga that is part history, part journey of discovery. This is the story of black and white families who have lived side-by-side through three hundred years.." Illustrated with black and white photographs. Genealogy charts, notes, index. 495 pp. Illustrated endpapers. ISBN: 0-374-265828.

New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (1998.). First edition - The author's first book, winner of the 1998 National Book Award. "The story of one man's exploration of his family's slave-owning past and his search for the descendants of the people his family kept as slaves. In 1698, Elias Ball traveled from his home in Devon, England, to Charleston, Carolina to take possession of his inheritance: part of a plantation and twenty slaves. Elias and his progeny built an American dynasty that lasted six generations, acquiring more than twenty plantations along the Cooper River near Charleston, selling rice known as Carolina Gold, and enslaving close to four thousand Africans and African-Americans until 1865, when Union troops arrived on the lawns of Balls' estates to force emancipation. ... A nonfiction American saga that is part history, part journey of discovery. This is the story of black and white families who have lived side-by-side through three hundred years.." Illustrated with black and white photographs. Genealogy charts, notes, index. 489 pp.

London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, (2004.) dj. Hardcover first edition - An attempt to explore the enigmas surrounding the life of English writer Gordon Hall - born as Gordon Ticehurst, he first changed his name to Hall, and later, after a sex change operation, to Dawn Langley Hall, and finally added Simmons after her marriage to a young black mechanic. His parents were servants at Sissinghurst, the home of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson, a connection that he frequently exploited in his later life. As a moderately successful writerof biographies of famous women, he wound up the heir of the wealthy New Yorker, Isabel Whitney, and used the money to purchase and restore an old mansion in Charleston, where for a while he suceeded in becoming part of that society. After a few years he not only had an operation changing his sex - but forever after Dawn Simmons claimed that she had been born a woman, and had been 'mis-sexed' at birth - and that she bore the child whom she raised as her daughter. The second book by this National Book Award winning author. An engrossing story in one way, full of hearsay and anecdotes and gossip, although one also has to agree with Nigel Nicholson, who was interviewed for the book but who wondered why Ball took such an interest in such a minor subject as 'Dinky.' Illustrated with photographs. 271 pp.

New York: (1998) dj. Hardcover first edition - The author's first book, winner of the 1998 National Book Award. From the dj flap: this "is the story of one man's exploration of his family's slave-owning past and his search for the descendants of the people his family kept as slaves. In 1698, Elias Ball traveled from his home in Devon, England, to Charleston, Carolina to take possession of his inheritance: part of a plantation and twenty slaves. Elias and his progeny built an American dynasty that lasted six generations, acquiring more than twenty plantations along the Cooper River near Charleston, selling rice known as Carolina Gold, and enslaving close to four thousand Africans and African-Americans until 1865, when Union troops arrived on the lawns of Balls' estates to force emancipation. ... A nonfiction American saga that is part history, part journey of discovery. This is the story of black and white families who have lived side-by-side through three hundred years.." Illustrated with black and white photographs. Genealogy charts, notes, index. 495 pp. Illustrated endpapers. ISBN: 0-374-265828.

Navarro, CA: Wild Trees Press. (1985). First edition - A first person narrative" by this teacher, activist and pioneer in grassroots citizenship education, whom Martin Luther King called the Mother of the Movement edited and with an introduction by Cynthia Brown. Septima Clark was born in 1898 in Charleston, South Carolina, the daughter of a former slave and a laundrywoman, and she taught for over 30 years in South Carolina. In 1956 she was fired for refusing to disavow her membership in the NAACP, and after that she worked fulltime in running workshops, first for Highlander and later for the SCLC and the American Field Service, where taught people basic literacy skills, their rights and duties as U.S. citizens, and how to fill out voter registration forms. Among those who participated in one of her workshops was Rosa Parks. Illustrated with photographs. Includes a chronology and notes on sources. 134 pp. Wild Trees Press which published this account was founded by Alice Walker and Robert Allen. ISBN: 0-931125049.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, (1938) dj. Hardcover - An appealing young adult novel by this award-winning author who was one of the first writers of juvenile literature to focus on minority groups, in an attempt to increase understanding among all readers. This tells the story of a 16-year old African American girl, accustomed to life in Minneapolis who goes to live with her mysterious great grandmother on an island off the cost of South Carolina. A Black Boston educator writing in 1940 commented after reading this book (which she was unable to put down) "Here is a courageous writer who is working towards a better type of literature about my race . . . She has handled the story with such grace as to make it appealing not only to young Negro girls, but to all girls." Illustrated by Armstrong Sperry with a frontispiece and seven internal glossy plates. 206 pp.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. dj. Hardcover first edition - Award-winning author Caryl Phillips explores three cities which were the points of the triangle forming the trans-Atlantic slave trade: Liverpool, constructed on the slave trade, now denying its past; the Ghanaian city of Elmina, site of an important slave embarkation fort in Africa; and Charleston, South Carolina, known as the entry point to America where one-third of black slaves were bought and sold. In this wide-ranging meditation on the legacy of slavery and the impact of the African diaspora on the life of a place and its people, Phillips interweaves his own observations with the stories of figures from the past. Born in St Kitts, Phillips was brought up in Leeds, England, educated in Oxford, and now lives in New York. ISBN: 0-375-401105.