Ellen and William Craft ran away from slavery in plain sight. Ellen, who was light skinned, disguised herself as a sickly white man. Her husband William presented himself as her slave. They traveled four days by train from Georgia to Boston. After they settled in New England, the Fugitive Slave Act was enacted and they fled to Liverpool. There they had their five children and William wrote a book about the couple’s experiences, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom.
After the Civil War, the couple moved to Bryan County in Georgia to set up a school for freedpeople. The school was burned by Ku Klux terrorists. The Crafts eventually retired to Charleston.
The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) installed a plaque honoring the couple, and the school’s museum created an eleven minute movie about the couple’s flight to freedom and their efforts at educational reform during Reconstruction. Here it is:
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