Annie L. Burton

For my midterm paper I will be doing a close reading of Annie L. Burton's Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days. Born into slavery on a plantation near Clayton, Alabama, Annie L. Burton was freed during her childhood by the Union Army. She moved to the North in 1879 and worked as a cook and a laundress in both Boston and New York. Her narrative tells of a relatively happy and oblivious life as a young girl on her plantation, and her subsequent struggles and successes in finding true freedom and redefining her identity throughout her adult life in the post-civil war era of emancipation. In addition to Annie L. Burton's first hand account, I will be using Yolanda Pierce's journal article "Her Refusal to Be Recast(e): Annie Burton's Narrative of Resistance" to guide my close reading.