Holiday Gifting: Jill Norgren Reviews The Slave Who Went to Congress

Reviewed by Jill Norgren

The Slave Who Went to Congress, (A picture book with substantial text. For young readers age 7-10)

By Marti Rosner and Frye Gaillard; illustrated by Jordana Haggard
Published by NewSouth Books, 2020

The nightly news recently featured a fifth grader who, moved by the ideas of the Black Lives Matter movement, had started a “diversity” book collection. The book under review, Rosner and Gaillard’s The Slave Who Went to Congress certainly merits inclusion in that youngster’s library.

Rosner and Gaillard’s illustrated storybook for young readers relates the life of Benjamin Sterling Turner, the first African American to elected — in 1870 — to represent Alabama in the US House of Representatives. Turner was born into a slave family, in North Carolina, in 1825. He and his mother were forcibly taken to Alabama in 1830.

He lived, until the age of forty, as a slave on farms and in the town of Selma. Denied even the right to learn the alphabet, Turner used his wits to gradually, painfully recognize letters, learn to spell, and eventually read full text. The effort at times resulted in whippings.

Turner was not only smart and motivated, from an early age he had the mind of a businessman. The authors illustrate how he found and used cracks in the system of slavery that permitted him to run small businesses for his owners, hire out, and eventually to keep a portion of his earnings.