Author Scott Shane celebrates Thomas Smallwood, a District shoemaker who helped rescue hundreds of enslaved people.
Scott Shane, author of “Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland,” is near the Anacostia River in Southeast D.C. His book recounts the efforts of the free Black man Thomas Smallwood, who, along with White abolitionist Charles Torrey, helped usher hundreds of enslaved people to freedom 20 years before the Civil War. Joggers were zipping by, dog walkers, parents pushing strollers. Pleasure boats were neatly berthed across from us at a private mooring spot.
Smallwood was born into slavery in 1801 and raised in Bladensburg, Md. Freed by his enslaver by age 30, he established himself as a shoemaker in the Navy Yard neighborhood in Southeast Washington.“When I like to imagine him, it would be 1842,” said Shane. “He had a wife — a free woman from Virginia — and four kids, with a fifth on the way. He was running his shoemaking business during the day to support his family and by night he was organizing these escapes.
In the 1840s, the banks would have been crowded with wharves, the nearby Navy Yard bustling with industry. The District was the “borderland” of Shane’s subtitle, a cauldron-like crossroads that was home to Whites, free Blacks and enslaved African Americans. It was home to congressmen who were enslavers and radical abolitionist congressmen;, a dealer in enslaved people whose notorious Yellow House jail was near the National Mall; and to the surreptitious emancipator Smallwood.
When Smallwood finally decided to flee — after some truly dramatic events Shane recounts in his riveting book — it was Toronto in which he settled with his family.
Deutschland Neuesten Nachrichten, Deutschland Schlagzeilen
Similar News:Sie können auch ähnliche Nachrichten wie diese lesen, die wir aus anderen Nachrichtenquellen gesammelt haben.
Editorial: If L.A. air quality officials go soft on toxic railroad pollution, are the ports next?Southern California air quality officials want to cut a deal with BNSF and Union Pacific that would shield them from regulation in exchange for voluntary pledges to reduce pollution. Should we worry that the ports of L.A. and Long Beach could be next?
Weiterlesen »
Government sues Union Pacific over using flawed test to disqualify color blind railroad workersThe federal government has joined 21 former rail workers in suing Union Pacific over the way it used a vision test to disqualify workers the railroad believed were color blind and might have trouble reading signals telling them to stop a train.
Weiterlesen »
Government sues Union Pacific over using flawed test to disqualify color blind railroad workersThe federal government has joined 21 former rail workers in suing Union Pacific over the way it used a vision test to disqualify workers the railroad believed were color blind and might have trouble reading signals telling them to stop a train.
Weiterlesen »
Arizona workers, government sue Union Pacific over using flawed test to disqualify color blind railroad workersThese cases were once going to be part of a class-action lawsuit the railroad estimated as many as 7,700 people who had to undergo the test.
Weiterlesen »
Daniel Radcliffe Remembers Dumbledore Actor Michael Gambon: ‘His True Passion Was Restoring 19th-Century Dueling Pistols’Daniel Radcliffe recalled working with the late Michael Gambon, who played Dumbledore in 'Harry Potter,' at Variety's Business of Broadway breakfast.
Weiterlesen »