From
Author(s)

Publication Year

Publisher

ISBN: 9781897071236-06

Categories: , , ,

Henry Box Brown, an International Fugitive

Slavery, Resistance, and Imperialism

From: Black Geographies

$2.20

In 1849 in Richmond, Virginia, the slave Henry Brown, with the help of a white shoe-dealer and a black freedman, camouflaged himself as “dry goods” by crawling into a wooden shipping box one-and-a-half-foot deep, two feet wide, and three feet long. His co-conspirators nailed up the box and mailed him via overland express – a twenty-seven-hour trip – to the anti-slavery office of James Johnson in Philadelphia. Thereafter, Brown’s image travelled above and beyond law, beyond the sentimental politics of containment and into dangerously insurgent ground where interracial uprising could and did happen.

Preview

Contributors

Suzette A. Spencer

Suzette A. Spencer holds a doctorate in African American Studies from the African Diaspora Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on African American and Caribbean literatures and cultures and black feminisms. She is working on ``Stealing a Way,'' a book about maroonage, slavery, and African American and Caribbean discourse. Her scholarship has appeared in African American Review, Black Scholar, Macomere, and Women's Review of Books.