On the Move: Stories of African American Migration and Mobility: Fugitive Slave Act
Fugitive Slave Act
Following the first Fugitive Slave Act, passed by the U.S Congress in 1793, until the 13th amendment abolished slavery in the United States in 1864, African Americans found ways to liberate themselves. The laws and practices designed to capture self-emancipated individuals and return them to slavery were severe enough to make running away a deadly proposition for enslaved communities. The individuals who escaped were willing to risk being maimed, raped, or the torture of their loved ones to be free of bondage.
"I drew aside the window curtain, to take a last look of my child. The moonlight shone on her face, and I bent over her, as I had done years before, that wretched night when I ran away. I hugged her close to my throbbing heart; and tears, too sad for such young eyes to shed, flowed down her cheeks, as she gave her last kiss, and whispered in my ear, "Mother, I will never tell." And she never did." — Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Photo courtesy State Archives of North Carolina
Exhibition materials
Diary entry of Sidney D. Bumpas about Lunsford Lane, 1842
This firsthand account of the lynching of Lunsford Lane, a free Black man in 1842, is a gruesome example of the danger Black people were up against in America. He was attacked because he had the audacity to advocate for the abolition of slavery and attempt to purchase his wife and children out of slavery. The narrator of this account is Sidney D. Bumpas, a Methodist minister living in Raleigh, NC at the time.
Gowrie Plantation ledger, April 1863
Gowrie Plantation ledger, April 1863In 1861, Dolly is enigmatically listed as an eight-year old. The entry is amended to record her escape on April 7, 1863. Other escapes from the plantation include Jack, the chief carpenter, who ran away February 20, 1862, came back under unknown circumstances and was sold in September 1863 for $180; John Izard, another carpenter, who ran away in December 1863; and a man named Charles who ran away in 1862. The four runaways listed on these two pages indicate that the desire to leave the enslaved life was strong. Alongside these shocking, but surely not atypical, matter-of-fact entries of human property is the praise for the Confederate States of America - an entity designed to keep enslaved people in bondage. Against this Civil War backdrop, the individuals depicted so flatly on these pages paid active attention to their surroundings and seized opportunities to escape when they arose.
The runaway ad for Dolly is one of the more striking items in the Southern Historical Collection. On the surface of this item, we see a slaveowner who “knows” Dolly well (describing her mannerisms and physical attributes) doesn’t blame her for leaving (enticed by a white man) and his willingness to pay top dollar ($50.00) to have her back. On a second read we must wonder what risk is posed to Dolly by being described as “rather good looking”? And how does her photograph on file make her escape more dangerous.
Manigault Family Papers 1824-1897 (00484)
The narrative of Lunsford Lane : formerly of Raleigh, N.C., embracing an account of his early life, the redemption by purchase of himself and family from slavery, and his banishment from the place of his birth for the crime of wearing a colored skin. by Call Number: VCB L2652nPublication Date: 1842Lundsford Lane wrote his autobiography, The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C. Embracing an Account of His Early Life, the Redemption by Purchase of Himself and Family from Slavery, and His Banishment from the Place of His Birth for the Crime of Wearing a Colored Skin – which speaks directly to his experience as a victim of a lynching. Lane’s story highlights the contradictions of slavery as a legal institution and the depth of anti-Black racism in the United States – a man could legally buy his freedom but has no protection from the law when he seeks to do the same for his family members. Full text available online via Documenting the American South. From the Rare Book Collection- A bill to provide for the apprehension of runaway slaves, in the Great Dismal Swamp, and for other purposes. by Call Number: Cp326.7 N87g2Publication Date: 1846This bill was passed by the North Carolina General Assembly in 1846 to prevent runaway enslaved persons from taking refuge in the Great Dismal Swamp. The swamp, which was too muddy for horses or canoes and full of snakes and mosquitoes, became the home to “Maroons” who escaped slavery from North Carolina and Virginia. Slave holders were so afraid of the influence these Maroon communities would have on the enslaved African Americans that Section 3 of this bill states that any slave found near the swamp could be arrested and sentenced to receive 39 lashes on his or her bare back, and the white person that let this enslaved person wander would have to pay a $25.00 fine. From the North Carolina Collection
The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers by Call Number: CB J17h3ISBN: 9780807831311Publication Date: 2008-11-01Although millions of African American women were held in bondage over the 250 years that slavery was legal in the United States, Harriet Jacobs (1813-97) is the only one known to have left papers testifying to her life. Her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, holds a central place in the canon of American literature as the most important slave narrative by an African American woman. Born in Edenton, North Carolina, Jacobs escaped from her owner in her mid-twenties and hid in the cramped attic crawlspace of her grandmother's house for seven years before making her way north as a fugitive slave. In Rochester, New York, she became an active abolitionist, working with all of the major abolitionists, feminists, and literary figures of her day, including Frederick Douglass, Lydia Maria Child, Amy Post, William Lloyd Garrison, Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Fanny Fern, William C. Nell, Charlotte Forten Grimke, and Nathan Parker Willis. Jean Fagan Yellin has devoted much of her professional life to illuminating the remarkable life of Harriet Jacobs. Over three decades of painstaking research, Yellin has discovered more than 900 primary source documents, approximately 300 of which are now collected in two volumes. These letters and papers written by, for, and about Jacobs and her activist brother and daughter provide for the thousands of readers of Incidents--from scholars to schoolchildren--access to the rich historical context of Jacobs's struggles against slavery, racism, and sexism beyond what she reveals in her pseudonymous narrative. Accompanied by a CD containing a searchable PDF file of the entire contents, this collection is a crucial launching point for future scholarship on Jacobs's life and times. From the North Carolina Collection
Additional resources
The Bondwoman's Narrative by Call Number: PS1449.C6745 B65 2002ISBN: 0446530085Publication Date: 2002-04-02This 19th century slave narrative is the subject of 21st century literary and historical scholarship. Scholars believe that Hannah Bond is a pseudonym for Hannah Crafts, an enslaved woman who escaped from a plantation in Murfreesboro, North Carolina in 1857. In the novel, believed to be semi-autobiographical, Hannah describes the constant physical and emotional terror of being on the run, including going days without eating, the threat of slave traders taking her back to the plantation, and not being able to fully trust anyone that she encountered.
Exposing Slavery by ISBN: 9780190663933Publication Date: 2019-04-01Within a few years of the introduction of photography into the United States in 1839, slaveholders had already begun commissioning photographic portraits of their slaves. Ex-slaves-turned-abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass had come to see how sitting for a portrait could help them project humanity and dignity amidst northern racism. In the first decade of the medium, enslaved people had begun entering southern daguerreotype studios of their own volition, posing for cameras, and leaving with visual treasures they could keep in their pockets. And, as the Civil War raged, Union soldiers would orchestrate pictures with fugitive slaves that envisioned racial hierarchy as slavery fell. In these ways and others, from the earliest days of the medium to the first moments of emancipation, photography powerfully influenced how bondage and freedom were documented, imagined, and contested. By 1865, it would be difficult for many Americans to look back upon slavery and its fall without thinking of a photograph. Exposing Slavery explores how photography altered and was, in turn, shaped by conflicts over human bondage. Drawing on an original source base that includes hundreds of unpublished and little-studied photographs of slaves, ex-slaves, free African Americans, and abolitionists, as well as written archival materials, it puts visual culture at the center of understanding the experience of late slavery. It assesses how photography helped southerners to defend slavery, enslaved people to shape their social ties, abolitionists to strengthen their movement, and soldiers to pictorially enact interracial society during the Civil War. With diverse goals, these peoples transformed photography from a scientific curiosity into a political tool over only a few decades. This creative first book sheds new light on conflicts over late American slavery, while also revealing a key moment in the relationship between modern visual culture and racialized forms of power and resistance.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Call Number: Full Text OnlineISBN: 0140437959Publication Date: 2000-07-01A haunting, evocative recounting of her life as an enslaved person in North Carolina, and her final escape and emancipation, Jacobs' narrative, written between 1853 and 1858 and published in 1861, is one of the most important books ever written documenting the traumas and horrors of slavery in the antebellum South.
Narrative of the life of Moses Grandy, late a slave in the United States of America by Call Number: Documenting the American SouthPublication Date: 1843Born into slavery in North Carolina around 1786, Moses Grandy was bequeathed to his young playmate, his original owner's son, when they were both eight years old. Hired out until he was twenty-one, Grandy describes each of his temporary masters--some cruel and some kind. His first wife is sold shortly after they marry, and he never sees her again. After saving his money whenever possible and buying his freedom for $600, Grandy is betrayed by his childhood friend, who sells him. Grandy marries again and purchases his freedom a second time, only to be once again betrayed. With the assistance of white friends, Grandy buys his freedom a third time and moves north. He is also able to purchase the freedom of his second wife, but their children remain in slavery. Grandy wrote this Narrative to raise funds for the freedom of his children.
- NC Runaway Slave Advertisements projectThe North Carolina Runaway Slave Advertisements project provides online access to all known runaway slave advertisements (more than 2300 items) published in North Carolina newspapers from 1751 to 1840. These brief ads provide a glimpse into the social, economic, and cultural world of the American slave system and the specific experience within North Carolina. Working from microfilmed copies of these rare publications, the project team scanned the ads to provide digital images, create full-text transcripts and descriptive metadata, and develop a searchable database. The NCRSA website includes digital scans of the ads, contextual essays to address their historical research value, full text transcripts, an annotated bibliography to aid researchers, and a searchable database.
A collaboration between The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T), the project builds on the work of Freddie L. Parker (Stealing a Little Freedom: Advertisements for Slave Runaways in North Carolina, 1791-1840) and Lathan Windley (Runaway Slave Advertisements) and presents digital images of the advertisements alongside full-text transcripts and additional metadata to facilitate search and discovery.
The advertisements were digitized from microfilm created by the North Carolina State Library and other sources. Staff members and student workers at UNCG and NC A&T scanned individual advertisements and then created transcripts and additional descriptive metadata.
- From Slavery to Freedom: the African-American Pamphlet Collection 1824-1909 (Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress)Presents 397 pamphlets from the Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division, published from 1824 through 1909, by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics. The materials range from personal accounts and public orations to organizational reports and legislative speeches. Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Kelly Miller, Charles Sumner, Mary Church Terrell, and Booker T. Washington. From Slavery to Freedom complements African-American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907.
