Elizabeth Dowling Taylor has 2 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators. The most-rated is Slave in the White House.
The Original Black Elite
Summary
From New York Times best-selling author Elizabeth Dowling Taylor comes this riveting chronicle of a critical yet overlooked chapter in American history: the inspiring rise and calculated fall of the Black elite, from Emancipation through Reconstruction to the Jim Crow Era - embodied in the experiences of an influential figure of the time, academic, entrepreneur, and political activist and Black history pioneer Daniel Murray. This cultural biography tells the enthralling story of the high-achieving Black elites who thrived in the nation's capital during Reconstruction. Daniel Murray (1851-1925), an assistant librarian at the Library of Congress, was a prominent member of this glorious class. Murray's life was reflective of those who were well-off at the time. This social circle included African American educators, ministers, lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, US senators and representatives, and other government officials. Among the luminaries were Francis and Archibald Grimke, Blanche Bruce, Pinckney Pinchback, Robert and Mary Church Terrell, Booker T. Washington, and W. E. B. DuBois. The elite were primed to assimilate into the cultural fabric as Americans first and people of color second. Education was a pearl of great pride, and they sent their children to the best schools - Phillips Academy, Cornell, and Harvard. They belonged to exclusive clubs, cultivated genteel manners, owned opulent homes, threw elaborate parties, dressed to the nines, and summered in special enclaves. The rug was pulled from under all African Americans when they were betrayed by the federal government as the cost of reconciliation with the South. In response to renewed oppression, Murray and others in his class fought back, establishing themselves as inspiring race activists. Elizabeth Dowling Taylor's powerful work brings to light a dark chapter of race relations that too many have yet to own.
©2017 Elizabeth Dowling Taylor (P)2018 Recorded Books
Slave in the White House
Summary
Paul Jennings was born into slavery on the plantation of James and Dolley Madison in Virginia, later becoming part of the Madison household staff at the White House. Once finally emancipated by Senator Daniel Webster later in life, he would give an aged and impoverished Dolley Madison, his former owner, money from his own pocket, write the first White House memoir, and see his sons fight with the Union Army in the Civil War. Based on correspondence, legal documents, and journal entries rarely seen before, this amazing portrait reveals the mores and attitudes toward slavery in the 19th century, and sheds new light on famous characters such as James Madison, French General Lafayette, Dolley Madison, and many other long-forgotten slaves, abolitionists, and civil rights activists.
©2012 Elizabeth Dowling Taylor. Recorded by arrangement with Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC. (P)2012 HighBridge Company.