Fresh Air, David W. Blight, Ruth Washington, Barbara Anne Hinksman, And Maureen Ramos, December 4, 2007

Hear historian David W. Blight on this edition of Fresh Air. Blight is director of Yale University's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, and a professor of American history. His new book A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation is based on the first-hand accounts, recently uncovered, of Wallace Turnage, a teenage field hand on an Alabama plantation and John Washington, an urban slave in Virginia. Using genealogical material, Blight reconstructed their childhoods and eventual escape from slavery. Then, the descendants of John Washington: Ruth Washington is 89 and his granddaughter; Barbara Anne Hinksman, 71, is his great-granddaughter; and Maureen Ramos, 45, is his great-great granddaughter. [Broadcast Date: December 4, 2007]