author
Kate Drumgoold
b. 1858
Born into slavery in Virginia around 1858 or 1859, she later turned her life story into a vivid memoir of freedom, faith, and self-education. Her work offers a rare first-person view of the years just after emancipation.
1 Audiobook
A Slave Girl's Story Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold.
by Kate Drumgoold
About the author
Kate Drumgoold was an American writer whose life is known chiefly through her 1898 autobiography, A Slave Girl's Story. Sources describe her as having been born near Petersburg, Virginia, around 1858 or 1859, with her early childhood shaped by slavery and the upheaval of the Civil War.
In her memoir, she writes about emancipation, family separation and reunion, and her determination to build an education for herself. The book is especially valued as a firsthand account by a Black woman reflecting on both the rural South and life in New York, while also emphasizing religion, resilience, and racial uplift.
Little seems to be firmly documented about her later life, including the date of her death. What remains clear is that A Slave Girl's Story preserves an important personal voice from the post-emancipation era and continues to be read for its honesty, historical value, and sense of hard-won hope.