Sapelo's People

Historian William McFeely, Pulitzer Prize winner in 1982 for "Grant: A Biography" explores America's history of slavery and reconstruction by recreating the rich but troubled past of the people of Sapelo, a low-lying barrier island off the coast of Georgia. The 67 people living there are all descendants of slaves who once worked its huge cotton plantation, slaves who made the brutal Middle Passage from Africa. Based on family records and interviews with the inhabitants, this text traces the lives of their forebears: among them Bilali, the Muslim slave who left a manuscript written in Arabic when he died; his daughters and grandchildren who were forcibly evacuated by the plantation owner and marched into the interior of Georgia when the Union Navy threatened the coast during the Civil War; and March Carter and James Lemon, who ran away to join the Union army and fight for freedom.