Albert was a former slave, pastor’s wife, mother, teacher, writer and archivist of slave history. She’s said to have “chronicled two-hundred-fifty years of African American history.” Albert served as a mouthpiece for numerous ex-slaves in the era of Reconstruction. Her book, The House of Bondage, tells their stories as a challenge to the narrative of “paternalistic Christian slave owners [who] cared for, fed, and employed uneducated, untrained blacks.” In addition, Albert writes in praise of the God who triumphed gloriously over the evils of chattel slavery.

Octavia Albert was a gospel thinker, and a woman with “harvest dirt” beneath her feet.