Volume 50, Number 6 · April 10, 2003
Escape Artist
By Darryl Pinckney
Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown
edited and with an introduction by Richard Newman, and with a foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Oxford University Press, 73 pp., $21.95
In the mid-nineteenth century a house slave or a slave in town was more likely to learn to read and write than was a slave in the fields, just as a house slave or a slave in town also had more chances for escape. Literacy, like light skin when it came to devising disguises, aided in escapes. Slaves who could read could not only keep track of the wanted posters and newspaper advertisements concerning fugitives, in some cases they could also write their own passes and any authorities they met along the road would be slow to suspect a slave of being the author of his or her own freedom. One valiant woman, before escaping disguised as a sailor, hid in her grandmother's cramped attic storeroom for seven years, but in the meantime convinced her masters that she had already fled by getting a letter of hers smuggled out by ship to New York, after which it was mailed back to Virginia.
Review, 4207 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |