Suddenly, the Haymarket filled with a flash of white light. Then silence.

This was the second day in Albert’s life in which he had been both threatened with lynching and thrown down a flight of stairs. The first time was by Klansmen in the South, for the sin of encouraging freed slaves to register to vote; now it was happening in the North for encouraging wage slaves to unionize.

I never wanted to be known. I kept my story to myself; I never told anyone that I was born a slave in Virginia; I