Tell Them We Were Rising is a collection of biographies describing various individuals of color from Nashville and the surrounding region, who experienced slavery and went on to live compelling lives. Along with details of their family backgrounds, their struggles and triumphs are often related in their own words. A series of intimate and vivid accounts, extending from slavery to what were once the fleeting possibilities of Reconstruction, reveal the nuances of slavery and race from the perspective of individual lives. There is the history of a girl who was able to save her family by bearing the children of her former master, There are the writings of a young woman who used her musical ability to help establish a university, and the remarkable narrative written by an old man about the plantation where he had lived as a boy. There is the small, uneducated man who eventually led hundreds of people to what he saw as a land of greater opportunity, and the young man who escaped brutality and became a leading figure in the Underground Railroad. There is the man who was brought from Africa to America as a slave, and who ultimately gave rise to generations of architects and engineers. There is the family that included a betrayed West Point cadet, a notable government official, and individuals who found success in a wide range of different arenas. And along with an educator who taught black children to read and write long before it was legal, there is a beloved and iconic physician, there are dynamic businessmen, and there are ministers who worked tirelessly on behalf of their community. Taken together, the arcs of those lives illuminate a period that is often so generalized that it becomes difficult to see. Those whose voices are heard in Tell Them We Were Rising not only talk about curse of slavery, and about Reconstruction and Jim Crow, they speak about the journey they were on, and the destination they expected their people to eventually reach.
