The Education of Betsey Stockton: An Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom

Gregory Nobles

Jun 2022 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Lisa Reneé Pitts

About this audiobook

The life of Betsey Stockton (ca. 1798-1865) is a remarkable story of a Black woman's journey from slavery to emancipation, from antebellum New Jersey to the Hawai'ian Islands, and from her own self-education to a lifetime of teaching others. When Betsey Stockton was a child, she was "given, as a slave" to the household of Rev. Ashbel Green, a prominent pastor and later the president of what is now Princeton University. Although she never went to school, she devoured the books in Green's library. After being emancipated, she used that education to benefit other people of color, first in Hawai'i as a missionary, then Philadelphia, and, for the last three decades of her life, Princeton-a college town with a genteel veneer that never fully hid its racial hostility. Betsey Stockton became a revered figure in Princeton's sizeable Black population, a founder of religious and educational institutions, and a leader engaged in the day-to-day business of building communities. In this first book-length telling of Betsey Stockton's story, Gregory Nobles illuminates both a woman and her world, following her around the globe, and showing how a determined individual could challenge her society's racial obstacles from the ground up. It's at once a revealing lesson on the struggles of Stockton's times and a fresh inspiration for our own.

About the author

Gregory Nobles is professor emeritus of history at Georgia Institute of Technology and a historian who has written extensively on the era from the American Revolution to the Civil War. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including John James Audubon: The Nature of the American Woodsman.

Lisa Renee Pitts is an award-winning actress in theater, television, and film, as well as an accomplished audiobook narrator and an AudioFile Earphones Award winner.