author
Charles Ball
Born into slavery in Maryland, this early Black memoirist turned a life of forced labor, separation, and repeated escapes into one of the most vivid first-person accounts of slavery in the United States. His story also traces his service during the War of 1812 and the long struggle for freedom that shaped his writing.
1 Audiobook
Fifty Years in Chains; or, the Life of an American Slave
by Charles Ball
About the author
Born around 1780 in Maryland, Charles Ball was an enslaved African American who later became known for dictating powerful autobiographical narratives about his life. Historical sources identify him with the name Charles Gross, and describe a childhood marked by family separation after the death of his enslaver.
Over the course of his life, Ball was sold multiple times and taken farther south, experiences that became central to his later memoirs. He also served with American naval forces during the War of 1812, a chapter that helped make his story especially distinctive among early slave narratives.
Ball is best remembered for Slavery in the United States and the related memoir often published as Fifty Years in Chains or The Life and Adventures of Charles Ball. His writing is valued not just as personal testimony, but as a rare, detailed witness to the daily realities of slavery, resistance, and survival in the early United States.