WELLFLEET, Mass., Dec. 6 (UPI) -- U.S. author Dorothy Sterling, who wrote some of the first non-fiction works about black history for young readers, has died at 95, her daughter says.
Among her 35 published works, Sterling is best known for "Freedom Train," a 1954 non-fiction book for children about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, The New York Times reported Saturday.
Her daughter, Anne Fausto-Sterling, confirmed Sterling died Monday at her home in Wellfleet, Mass.
Sterling was a New Yorker who found many of her subjects while thinking about questions posed by her two children about the natural world, the Times said. While looking around for biographical subject, she found inspiration in Tubman's work helping escaped slaves flee the U.S. South. The resulting book, "Freedom Train," influenced a generation that later led the civil rights movement.
"I had found a subject about which I cared deeply," she wrote for the reference work, "Something About the Author," the Times said. "At the age of 40, I had finally become a writer."
