What Ellen didn’t know yet was that Wilmington would bring a different kind of danger. Not an official demanding papers, but a woman whose polite…
She was middle-aged, well-dressed, with the bearing of plantation wealth. Her eyes moved systematically across the platform, examining faces, searching for something or someone. When…
British audiences already sympathetic to abolitionism but often removed from its immediate realities heard firstirhand testimony that made slavery impossible to dismiss as an abstract…

On June 14th, 2001, a mother left her six-year-old daughter with her trusted teacher. For just one afternoon, while she ran an emergency errand across…
Or worse still, becoming an example, tortured publicly to terrify others who might dare to dream of freedom. Ellen took a long, slow breath and…
“What do I need to remember?” William’s voice was steady, though his eyes betrayed his fear. Walk slowly like moving hurts. Keep the glasses on,…
Neither of them knew that within hours the greatest test of their courage would arrive, not as an official demand or a suspicious question, but…
With courage and ingenuity, people could reclaim their own lives. Other enslaved people heard the story and were inspired to attempt their own escapes. While…

On a Saturday morning in July 1998, a mother watched her 5-year-old daughter run into a cluster of trees at the edge of a playground…
During their 19 years in England, they never stopped telling their story. They spoke at churches, at political gatherings, at anti-slavery conventions. They raised funds…


