East Baton Rouge Parish Library

The devil's half acre, The untold story of how one woman liberated the south's most notorious slave jail., Kristen Green

eng

no index present

non fiction

The devil's half acre

dictionaries

Kristen Green

The untold story of how one woman liberated the south's most notorious slave jail.

The inspiring true story of an enslaved woman who liberated an infamous slave jail and transformed it into one of the nation’s first HBCUs  In  The Devil’s Half Acre ,  New York Times  bestselling author Kristen Green draws on years of research to tell the extraordinary and little-known story of young Mary Lumpkin, an enslaved woman who blazed a path of liberation for thousands. She was forced to have the children of a brutal slave trader and live on the premises of his slave jail, known as the “Devil’s Half Acre.” When she inherited the jail after the death of her slaveholder, she transformed it into “God’s Half Acre,” a school where Black men could fulfill their dreams. It still exists today as Virginia Union University, one of America’s first Historically Black Colleges and Universities.   A sweeping narrative of a life in the margins of the American slave trade,  The Devil’s Half Acre  brings Mary Lumpkin into the light. This is the story of the resilience of a woman on the path to freedom, her historic contributions, and her enduring legacy.