[1][2] She documented slavery in the United States through a collection of interviews with formerly enslaved people in her book The House of Bondage, or Charlotte Brooks and Other Slaves, which was posthumously published in 1890.

[3] Albert was born Octavia Victoria Rogers in Oglethorpe, Georgia, where she was enslaved until the abolition of slavery in the United States.

[6] After her conversion, she then taught because she saw teaching as a form of worship and as a part of her Christian service like her fellow contemporaries.

Albert's writing goal was to tell the stories of enslaved people, their freedom, and their adjustment into a changing society to "correct and create history."

The stories of Charlotte Brooks and the others would eventually be compiled into a book after Octavia's death, published in New York by Hunt and Eaton in 1890.