{"id":39449,"date":"2015-01-15T02:11:25","date_gmt":"2015-01-15T02:11:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=39449"},"modified":"2015-01-15T15:38:40","modified_gmt":"2015-01-15T15:38:40","slug":"love-liberation-and-escaping-slavery-william-and-ellen-craft-in-cultural-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=39449","title":{"rendered":"Love, Liberation, and Escaping Slavery: William and Ellen Craft in Cultural Memory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Love, Liberation, and Escaping Slavery: William and Ellen Craft in Cultural Memory<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

University of Georgia Press<\/a>
\n2015-05-15
\n136 pages
\n8 b&w photos
\nTrim size: 6 x 9
\nHardcover ISBN: 978-0-8203-3802-6
\nPaper ISBN: 978-0-8203-4724-0
\nEbook ISBN: 978-0-8203-4832-2<\/p>\n

Barbara McCaskill<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor of English and co-director of the Civil Rights Digital Library
\nUniversity of Georgia<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

How William and Ellen Craft\u2019s escape from slavery, their activism, and press accounts figured during the antislavery movement of the mid-1800s and Reconstruction<\/em><\/p>\n

he spectacular 1848 escape of William and Ellen Craft<\/a> (1824\u20131900; 1826\u20131891) from slavery in Macon, Georgia<\/a>, is a dramatic story in the annals of American history. Ellen, who could pass for white<\/a>, disguised herself as a gentleman slaveholder; William accompanied her as his \u201cmaster\u2019s\u201d devoted slave valet; both traveled openly by train, steamship, and carriage to arrive in free Philadelphia<\/a> on Christmas Day. In Love, Liberation, and Escaping Slavery<\/em>, Barbara McCaskill revisits this dual escape and examines the collaborations and partnerships that characterized the Crafts\u2019 activism for the next thirty years: in Boston<\/a>, where they were on the run again after the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law<\/a>; in England<\/a>; and in Reconstruction-era<\/a> Georgia<\/a>. McCaskill also provides a close reading of the Crafts\u2019 only book, their memoir, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom<\/em><\/a>, published in 1860.<\/p>\n

Yet as this study of key moments in the Crafts\u2019 public lives argues, the early print archive\u2014newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets, legal documents\u2014fills gaps in their story by providing insight into how they navigated the challenges of freedom as reformers and educators, and it discloses the transatlantic British and American audiences\u2019 changing reactions to them. By discussing such events as the 1878 court case that placed William\u2019s character and reputation on trial, this book also invites readers to reconsider the Crafts\u2019 triumphal story as one that is messy, unresolved, and bittersweet. An important episode in African American literature, history, and culture, this will be essential reading for teachers and students of the slave narrative genre and the transatlantic antislavery movement and for researchers investigating early American print culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Love, Liberation, and Escaping Slavery: William and Ellen Craft in Cultural Memory University of Georgia Press 2015-05-15 136 pages 8 b&w photos Trim size: 6 x 9 Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8203-3802-6 Paper ISBN: 978-0-8203-4724-0 Ebook ISBN: 978-0-8203-4832-2 Barbara McCaskill, Associate Professor of English and co-director of the Civil Rights Digital Library University of Georgia How William […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1245,11,8413,459,1196,8,17,6940,20],"tags":[19064,88,463,19065,1052],"class_list":["post-39449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-books","category-communications","category-history","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-barbara-mccaskill","tag-ellen-craft","tag-university-of-georgia-press","tag-william-and-ellen-craft","tag-william-craft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}