From the early days of the antislavery movement, when political action by women was frowned upon, British and American women were tireless and uncompromising campaigners for abolition; without their efforts, emancipation could have taken decades longer. As Gunn and Willen's other collaborative nonfiction title for young people, Five Thousand Years of Slavery (Tundra, 2011) demonstrates, slavery still exists in the modern world. What Speak a Word for Freedom shows is that so do indefatigable female campaigners.