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He cut off his wife’s long hair and tied a scarf around her chin in pretense of her having a toothache to hide her smooth skin and disguise her voice. Ellen wore men’s clothing and green spectacles over her eyes. Because Ellen was illiterate (and a well-bred White man wouldn’t be), she wore her arm in a sling to avoid having to write. Ellen went to the train station and purchased tickets to Philadelphia for herself and her slave.
For eight days and a thousand miles, they traveled by train and steamer among White Southerners undetected. If anyone asked, they said Ellen was traveling north for medical care—a believable story given her bandages. A police officer in Baltimore asked for proof that Ellen owned William. The train’s conductor attested that they had traveled with him from Washington to Baltimore, and the hurried officer let them continue. Abolitionist and fellow escapee William Wells Brown, welcomed the Crafts when they finally arrived in Philadelphia—on Christmas Day 1848.
It is a common practice for gentlemen (if I may call them such), moving in the highest circles of society, to be the fathers of children by their slaves, whom they can and do sell with the greatest impunity; and the more pious, beautiful, and virtuous the girls are, the greater the price they bring, and that too for the most infamous purposes
—William Craft
The Crafts settled in Boston following their journey, and well-known abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison encouraged them to take their tale on the antislavery lecture circuit. Ellen once again found herself in a paradox. Just as her maligned biracial birth had saved her and William, she could not tell their tale of escaping to freedom to the audiences that came to hear it—society frowned upon women speaking publicly. Instead, William told the story with Ellen standing beside him.
Warrants were issued for the Crafts’ return to Georgia, but to no avail. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, however, William and Ellen feared they would be captured and moved to England. They continued their public appearances in England and raised five children. William chronicled their escape in the 1860 memoir, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom.
In 1868, William and Ellen returned to the United States with two of their children and purchased land near Savannah, Ga. They started a plantation and opened an industrial school for African American children, where Ellen taught free of charge. Aggression and sabotage from neighboring Whites caused both ventures to fail. Ellen died in 1891 and was buried beneath her favorite tree on their land. The land was later auctioned to pay William’s debts, and he moved to Charleston, S.C., where he died in 1900.
William and Ellen’s great-granddaughter, Ellen Craft, lived in Pittsburgh and married Donald Dammond, a 1938 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, and the nephew of William Hunter Dammond, the first Black graduate of Pitt.
In 1824, 9-year-old Henry Highland Garnet and 10 family members fled New Market, Md. They were slaves and they were on the run. Led by Henry’s father, George, the family spent weeks traveling by foot and carriage to Wilmington, Del., more than 100 miles away. The Trusty Family, as the Garnets were known before escaping, had received permission to attend a family funeral, but they never intended to return. Their former master, William Spencer, a bachelor, had died. His brother and nephews, harsh slaveholders, stood to inherit his estate, including the Trustys.
Upon reaching Wilmington, the Trustys split up with Henry, his father and mother, and sister traveling another 60 miles to New Hope, Pa. In 1825, they moved on to New York and changed the family name to Garnet. Henry’s mother, Henny, became Elizabeth. His sister, Mary, became Eliza. It appeared the Garnets had succeeded in escaping, but their troubles were not yet over. Henry worked as a cabin boy on a schooner, traveling to Cuba and Washington, D.C.
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When he returned to port, he learned that slave hunters had invaded his parents’ home while he was away. George had barely escaped, and the family home was destroyed. White neighbors hid Henry’s mother, and his sister Eliza was arrested and then released when her New York residency as a free slave was established. Friends spirited Henry off to Long Island, where he worked as a farmhand for two years before returning home.
Henry Highland Garnet went on to become an outspoken— and sometimes controversial—opponent of slavery as well as a central figure in Black education and spiritual life. He attended New York’s African Free School between 1826 and 1833 and later enrolled in the Phoenix High School for Colored Youth. Garnet graduated from the Oneida Institute in 1839 and married Julia Williams in 1841. Their family included three children, two sons and a daughter. In 1840, a leg injury from Garnet’s youth resulted in amputation, and he needed crutches throughout his lifetime.
Nonetheless, in 1841, Garnet began an eight-year ministry at the Liberty Street Presbyterian Church in Troy, N.Y., where he developed into a fierce and emotional advocate of abolition and Black suffrage. During the 1843 Negro National Convention in Buffalo, Garnet gained notoriety with his speech, “Address to the Slaves of the United States of America,” which encouraged slaves to resist the institution: “Let our motto be resist, resist! No oppressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance!” Although his audience was reportedly moved to tears, such abolitionists as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, both of whom embraced moral suasion, felt that Garnet’s speech was too inflammatory. Garnet’s angry response was: “Maybe the slaves ought simply to ask for their liberty since the masters would surely let them have it.” But Garnet’s speech diminished his role as a Black leader— he was considered too volatile. Even his support of Blacks expatriating to Africa was outdated as Black delegates to the convention positioned themselves to demand equal rights on American soil.
In the 1850s, Garnet traveled around England speaking against American slavery. He also served as a missionary in Jamaica, where he founded two schools for Black children, an industrial school for women headed by his wife, and helped to establish the African Civilization Society, which stressed the importance of Black missionary work and Black entrepreneurship in Africa. He returned to the United States following the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 to help his friend and Pittsburgh abolitionist Martin R. Delany recruit Black troops for the Union Army.
In 1865, Garnet became the first Black person to deliver a sermon to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Garnet moved from his home in New York City to Allegheny City (now Pittsburgh’s North Side) in 1868 when Avery College, a Black religious school established by Pittsburgh philanthropist Charles Avery, hired him as president. During his two years in Pittsburgh, Garnet established Grace Memorial Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, the city’s first Black Presbyterian church. Garnet returned to New York in 1870 and his wife, Julia, died the following year. In 1881, Garnet was appointed U.S. ambassador to Liberia, Africa, and accepted the post despite his fragile health. Garnet was determined to feel the soil of Africa beneath his feet. He died several months later, on February 12, 1882, and was buried on a hill in Liberia “overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, which separated his two beloved countries.”
Frederick Douglass not only had the luck to escape, but to try it more than once. He was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey to slave Harriet Bailey and an unknown White father in Maryland in 1818. Douglass lived with his grandmother until he was old enough to work. At age 6, he was sent to the farm of Aaron Anthony as a field hand where he experienced the horrors of slavery: ragged clothes, meager meals, and witnessing brutal whippings.
At age 8, Douglass was sent to Baltimore as the house servant of Hugh Auld, the brother-in-law of Aaron Anthony’s daughter, Lucretia Auld. Hugh Auld managed a shipbuilding firm, and his wife, Sophia, began teaching Douglass to read until Hugh forbade her. Undaunted, Douglass continued his education by learning to read from local White children and anything else he could find. He came to admire Baltimore’s large free Black community. He learned of the abolitionist movement and secretly resolved to become a free man.
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In 1833, Douglass, 15, returned as a field hand to the Anthony farm, now run by Hugh Auld’s brother Thomas, who inherited it from his late wife, Lucretia. Thomas Auld worked his slaves hard and kept them near starvation. He found the learned and forthright Douglass unruly and beat him often before selling him in 1834 to farmer Edward Covey, a reputed “slave breaker.” After a year of severe beatings—culminating in a surprisingly successful fistfight with Covey—Douglass was sold to a kind master. But he only wanted freedom. In 1836, he and some other slaves plotted to flee for Pennsylvania by boat and on foot. They were betrayed, however, and arrested. After a week in jail, Douglass—fearing he would be sent to the deep South—was instead retrieved by Thomas Auld and sent again to Hugh Auld. Once in Baltimore, Douglass worked in the shipyards and joined free Black educational groups where he honed his famous debating skills. In 1838, he met a free woman named Anna Murray and they were engaged. Now Douglass had to escape.
In September 1838, Douglass fled Baltimore dressed as a sailor and carrying a friend’s “protection papers,” which certified that he was a free American sailor. Anna bought him a ticket to Philadelphia and a friend brought his luggage to the Philadelphia train “just at the point of starting.” When Douglass produced his protection papers, the conductor gave him only a casual glance. In Wilmington, Del., he took a steamboat to Philadelphia, but Douglass knew he was not safe from slave hunters. He took another train north to New York City, arriving September 4, 1838, as a free man.
Douglass sent for Anna and they married on September 15 in New York. They continued to New Bedford, Mass., to ensure their safety from slave catchers. After a few months in New Bedford, Douglass subscribed to The Liberator, edited by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, leader of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass joined the society and regularly attended meetings and lectures. He also became involved in New Bedford’s Black community, serving as a preacher and speaking out about issues affecting the community. In 1841, Douglass, 23, finally met his hero Garrison at an abolitionist meeting in New Bedford. As abolitionists, they convened together in various cities, including Pittsburgh, and deeply admired each other. Over time, however, philosophical differences caused them to part ways. Garrison believed that the U.S. Constitution was a proslavery document; Douglass did not. And unlike Garrison, Douglass did not believe in dissolving the Union.
Douglass earned a reputation as an impassioned and tireless orator. He was appointed a lecturer by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and, with Charles Lenox Remond, conducted a One Hundred Conventions lecture tour in the West, stopping in Pittsburgh on November 6 and 7, 1843. Douglass lectured at the First Baptist Church in Pittsburgh, pastored by the Reverend Samuel L. Williams. Because of his education and speaking skills, many people doubted that Douglass had actually been a slave. Determined to make his story public, he wrote The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in 1845. In his narrative, Douglass named his slaveholder, a revelation that placed his freedom in jeopardy. In 1845, Douglass left with Garrison for a two-year speaking tour of the British Isles. By 1847, Douglass was an international celebrity, and generous benefactors raised funds to purchase his freedom from Hugh Auld—for about $700. Douglass also returned with enough money to begin his own abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, eventually joined in that endeavor by his friend and colleague Martin R. Delany of Pittsburgh.
In the 1850s, Douglass moved to Rochester, N.Y., to a house that was close enough to the Canadian border for him to escape from would-be kidnappers. During the Civil War, Douglass insisted in his speeches and editorials that abolition must be an ultimate goal of the war. He helped recruit Blacks