A daring escape from slavery, and the love story behind it
Ilyon Woo is the author of "Master Slave Husband Wife," a nonfiction account of an enslaved married couple that escaped to freedom by impersonating a white male slave owner and his Black servant.
Woo portrait by Michael Wilson/Simon & Schuster
This year marks the 175th anniversary of the escape to freedom of William and Ellen Craft, a married couple enslaved in Georgia. Devoted to each other and determined to start a family only once free, the duo devised a jaw-dropping plan to disguise themselves as a master and enslaved person and travel north in plain sight. The ruse worked; light-skinned Ellen, whose white father was also her enslaver, successfully disguised herself as an ailing white gentleman dependent upon near round-the-clock assistance from a Black servant, William. Ilyon Woo’s book “Master Slave Husband Wife” casts a new eye on their riveting true story. She recently spoke with the Monitor.
When and where did you first learn of the Crafts?
I was in graduate school at Columbia University and taking a class called “The Literature of Passing.” The Crafts’ 1860 narrative, “Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom,” was one of many assigned. Once in a while, you read a text where you feel an immediate connection. I remember something seismic happening! That was over 20 years ago, and I kept wondering about it ever since.
Why We Wrote This
In the antebellum South, an enslaved couple made a decision for freedom – despite great risk. Their bravery speaks to the courage and spirit of generations of enslaved people.
What about their story connected with you?
I hadn’t heard of the Crafts before – and neither had many of my classmates. Their narrative is an adventure story and a page turner, with a voice that’s intimate, ironic, interesting, and, at times, deeply sad. I would’ve followed that voice anywhere.
What surprised you most as you began to research the Crafts’ story?
Their narrative includes a lot more detail than many in the genre. For recently self-emancipated people, it was very risky to write an account like this. It was important to protect one’s safety, as well as the safety of those left behind.
But the Crafts, because their story was so beyond belief, really had to prove themselves. They were questioned and had to prove their authenticity to a greater degree than most. So, they include some names, relationships, and other details. Still, one of the things that surprised me was how much more could be uncovered.
Did you come across a particularly memorable original document?
At one courthouse in Macon, Georgia, I found these old, beautifully penned papers. In them Ellen’s father – who was a surveyor, a lawyer, and an enslaver – legally gives her as a gift to his daughter Eliza. He’s giving Ellen, an enslaved young woman (who also happens to be his daughter, but isn’t named as such), as a present. And not just her, but her increase, her progeny. It’s an infinite gift. To feel that page in my hand made me shudder.
What qualities do you think sustained the Crafts during their escape – and then in the years of lecturing and fame that followed?
I’ve never read about, studied, or known people with this level of resilience.
Their journey required tremendous resilience and fortitude both to improvise continually and to survive. Then the Crafts arrive in the North and it’s not like there’s some magical line they cross and they’re set free. They are still enslaved by law and deeply in danger. And yet they decide with a heroic spirit to stay. They could’ve disappeared at this point. They could’ve changed their names or gone to Canada, which was the original plan. But when they get an invitation to tell their story publicly, they embrace it.
They decide: “We’re going to do this. We’re going to tell our story, not just for ourselves and our loved ones, but for everyone left behind. We’re going to tell the world.” They start lecturing, going another 1,000 miles, months on end. And then they pause in Boston, but once the Fugitive Slave Act passes, they face this choice again: to flee or to stay. They decide, with this resilience and heroic fortitude, to stand their ground.
Why do you think the Crafts’ experience isn’t more widely known?
Their story is complicated and multilayered in a way that doesn’t give us, as a nation, the happy ending that we crave. To be free, they had to escape not just the South, but the United States of America. They showed Americans at our best – and at our worst.
The great-great-granddaughter of the Crafts praised your book. How did that make you feel?
It was very emotional for me to receive Peggy Preacely’s words. She’s an incredible lady! She was a Freedom Rider, and today she’s a beautiful poet and an oral historian – truly a living embodiment of their spirit.
I think back to that moment when I was in the courthouse archives holding that piece of paper that consigned not only Ellen Craft but her increase infinitely. That touches our present generation. There are filmmakers, lawyers, activists ... so many descendants on both sides of the country and around the world who are born of these two.