I had actually learned about this couple many many years ago through self teaching but I absolutely love how Jesse writes about black history.
Jesse Smith
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February 2 at 12:42pm
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This is the story of Ellen and William Craft. We don’t really learn about them, because they made a BUNCH of white folks look super dumb in 1848.
So let’s talk about Ellen first, She’s born in 1826 to a mixed race slave and the owner of the plantation…
…a mixed race slave…1826….owner of the plantation.
Ellen is super light skinneded and looks just like her white half-siblings. At 11 years old Ellen is “gifted” to one of these girls as a wedding present, and is sent to live as a house slave in Macon, Georgia.
Meanwhile, William is being apprenticed as carpenter, He is allowed to take jobs as long as his master gets most of the money. He ends up on the same plantation as Ellen after he’s sold to settle gambling debts…Y’all hear me? He was sold to settle a poker dispute…
So that’s where they meet, and I like to think it was love at first sight, but like who’s say?
They get married and one day Ellen says to William:
“Yo, B, We gotta get up out of here! I love you, and wanna have a family with you and all that, but my kids ain’t growing up with this shit, so we gotta bounce!”
And William’s like:
“Word, how we gonna do it?”
Ellen tells him: “you know how I’m super light skinneded, and look like my white sisters?”
William get all excited like: “You sho’ do! Are you gonna try to pass as a white woman?”
Ellen got all annoyed like: “Hell Naw! This is 1848! Fuck I’m supposed to do as a woman? No, I’mma dress up like a white plantation owner DUDE, and we just gon walk our ass to freedom.”
AND THEY FUCKING DID! Using the money William saved from carpentry, Ellen dresses up in a top hat, and fancy clothes, puts her arm in a sling to disguise the fact that she can’t write and they made it all the way to the free state of Pennsylvania!
And they weren’t even really hoofing it that hard, by the power of white male privilege they were traveling first class on trains, staying in fancy hotels, Ellen once had dinner with the captain of a ship they were riding on, These two were escaping in style and I imagine, laughing at everyone along the way! romantic boho wedding garments hippie style
They kick it in Philly for a while, Then Boston and finally The fugitive slave act forced them from the country in 1850, and they spend the next 19 years in England.
in 1852 after learning to read and write Ellen wrote: “I had much rather starve in England, a free woman, than be a slave for the best man that ever breathed upon the American continent.”
Ellen was heavily involved in Abolitionist and Women’s Suffrage movements during her time in England. At the End of the Civil War upon returning to the united states Ellen and William Craft opened a school for freed slaves and lived almost to the turn of the century!
These two were incredible, and never stopped working for others once they got their own freedom. They challenged Race, Gender, and Class in a time where it meant death to do so, and that’s why Today February 2nd 2018 I’m remembering Ellen and William Craft.