Cover of Amanda Smith: An Autobiography (For Teens)

Book · 12 chapters · 39 min read · Accessible

Amanda Smith: An Autobiography (For Teens)

Amanda Berry Smith · 1837–1915

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An Autobiography
41 chapters·16 hr 46 min read
Cover of The Story of Amanda Smith (For Children)
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The Story of Amanda Smith (For Children)
12 chapters·17 min read

About this book

Amanda Berry Smith was born owned — a slave in Maryland — and became a preacher who crossed oceans alone. This teen retelling of her own memoir doesn’t flinch: slavery, grief, and prejudice are here, and so is a fierce, honest faith. Straight talk for anyone who’s ever been told they don’t rank, that God is for other people, or that the problems are too big to touch.

Amanda Berry was born in Maryland in 1837, and she was born owned. In the country of her birth a Black child could be bought and sold like a horse or a sack of grain, handed over as part of a bride’s dowry, worked for a whole lifetime and never paid a cent.
From Born Owned, Bought Free

Contents

  1. 1 Born Owned, Bought Free 3 min
  2. 2 The Man in the Bed 3 min
  3. 3 Learning to Read in the Cold 3 min
  4. 4 The Argument That Almost Won 3 min
  5. 5 Down in the Cellar 3 min
  6. 6 Buying Back Frances 3 min
  7. 7 When the Grief Came 3 min
  8. 8 The Only One Standing 3 min
  9. 9 Go, and I Will Go with You 3 min
  10. 10 Amanda Smith, the Washerwoman, Go to England? 3 min
  11. 11 Let Your Men Keep Silence 3 min
  12. 12 Little Bob 4 min

Questions and Answers

Was Amanda Smith really born into slavery?
Yes. She was born owned in Maryland in 1837, and her father, Samuel Berry, worked for years — days for the woman who owned him and nights making brooms and mats — to buy first himself and then his wife and children out of slavery.
How much schooling did she get?
Almost none — about three months in total. She taught herself to read by cutting large letters out of newspapers and arranging them into words on the windowsill.
How did a Black woman with no money become a preacher who traveled the world?
She had no ordination, no salary, and no church board behind her, and most ministers of her day opposed women preaching. She went anyway, convinced God had called her, and ended up ministering across the United States, Britain, India, and eight years in West Africa.
Does this teen edition cover the hard parts of her life?
Yes, honestly. It deals directly with slavery, racism, poverty, and the deaths of her husbands and children — the difficult material a younger children’s version leaves out — without dwelling on gruesome detail.
What did she mean by “belonging to royal stock”?
Amanda came to believe she was a child of God and carried herself with dignity no matter how others ranked her. In one English church she looked proud strangers in the face so they could see, as she put it, that she was “of the royal black.”
Who was little Bob?
Bob was a young boy in West Africa whose own father asked Amanda to raise him and teach him about God. Though she was sick and had no money, she took him into her home as her own child after sensing God tell her, “You do what you can, and where you leave off, God will raise up somebody to do the rest.”
Did Amanda found an orphanage in this book?
Not in this story. The orphanage she later became known for came after this memoir; in these pages her care for children is personal — taking individual children like Bob and her Bassa girl Frances into her own home.
What is the biggest thing a teenager can take from her life?
That a bad deal doesn’t have to be a dead end. Amanda faced injustice she couldn’t undo and grief she couldn’t reverse, and she kept trusting God and doing the next brave thing in front of her.