#audiobooksync 2018

For over 150 years, the celebration of Juneteenth has provided American communities a time to honor heroes of African American freedom and to reconnect with family, friends, and neighbors. This week’s AudiobookSYNC titles may be fictional, but they provide authentic stories of the real 19th century leadership in slaves’ fight for freedom. COME AUGUST, COME FREEDOM, performed by JD Jackson, and written by Gigi Amateau, takes listeners back a generation before the Civil War. MY NAME IS NOT FRIDAY, performed by Dion Graham and written by Jon Walter, depicts a freeborn African American youth enslaved at the very end of the Civil War. Both historical fiction novels provide essential details of the length, breadth, and barbarity of American slavery, and, just as important, the roles slaves had in changing the US from a nation in which slavery was tolerated, if not presumed, to one in which racial equality could become an achievable goal. Juneteenth marks the occasion of the news arriving in the last enslaved American communities that the Emancipation Proclamation made such servitude null and void.

Download these audiobooks for free at AudiobookSYNC until June 21.