Annie Burton

Annie L. Burton (c. 1858–?) was an African-American memoirist, whose life's story is captured in her 1909 autobiography Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days.[1] Her date of death is uncertain.

Biography

Annie Burton was born into slavery on a plantation near Clayton, Alabama, and was liberated in childhood by the Union army. Her father was a white man from Liverpool, England, who owned a nearby plantation and died in Lewisville, Alabama, in 1875.[2]

Moving North in 1879, she was among the earliest Black emigrants there from the South during the post-Civil War era, supporting herself in Boston and New York by working as a laundress and as a cook.[3] In her autobiography Burton relates that the end of slavery not only signaled a time for African Americans to start a new life, but also a time to redefine their lives: "Burton's Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days details not only one woman's quest from slavery to physical freedom but also her journey from a proscribed role to the creation of own free identity."[4]

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ Commire, Anne, ed. (2002). "Burton, Annie L.". Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Waterford, Connecticut: Yorkin Publications. ISBN 0-7876-4074-3. (subscription required (help)).
  2. ↑ Annie L. Burton, "Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days", in Women's Slave Narratives, Dover Publications, 2006, p. 5.
  3. ↑ Margaret Busby (ed.), "Annie L. Burton", Daughters of Africa, London: Cape, 1992, p. 145.
  4. ↑ Pierce, Yolanda. "Her refusal to be recast(e): Annie Burton’s narrative of resistance". The Southern Literary Journal 36.2 (2004). Gale Biography in Context. September 13, 2012.

External links

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