The play darkens, naturally, for the Surinam act, but equally naturally it becomes predictable: the chain gangs, the brutal punishments, the odious English slave owners, though Mr Bandele keeps Behn's one good white, the Governor's agent Mr Trefry, to balance Orumba.

ECONOMIST: Theatre at Stratford

At the height of the civil-rights movement, many readers were furious at the idea of a white Southerner writing as a black slave rebel.

ECONOMIST: William Styron

Imoinda, however, prefers execution to submission, but is sold to a white slave-trader instead by a character not in the original, the king's wicked minister, Orumba.

ECONOMIST: Theatre at Stratford

For a slave to lift his hand "against the sacred temple of a white man's body, " even in self-defense, was an act of rebellion.

NPR: A Radical History of the Underground Railroad

When will Forbes be publishing the latest from a columnist endorsing slavery (what white guy wouldn't like a nice black slave rather than a paid secretary to do his tedious officework.) Then you can have a black businessman rebut his point.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Some of the earliest works, like those of Joshua Johnston, a freed slave born in 1765, depict white subjects almost exclusively.

FORBES: Magazine Article