Ben and the Emancipation Proclamation

A young slave teaches himself to read, eventually reading Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation to fellow slaves imprisoned during the Civil War.

Ben, a young slave, uses every chance he gets to teach himself to read, practicing with the words he sees on street signs and in shop windows and even in cast-off newspapers he finds in the gutter.

But after the Civil War breaks out, his master leaves town and Ben finds himself in a slave prison. One night, the prisoners bribe a guard to get t...