"TIME TO CHOOSE"

 “TIME TO CHOOSE”

As we begin Black History Month, I want to note the journey of two Southern Black people, Ellen and William Craft,  who were held in slavery in Macon, Georgia, in the 1830’s and 1840’s.  They made a stunning and historic escape from slavery.  Their story should be more widely known for many reasons, but mainly because they kept on choosing freedom when they could have chosen stability and security.  I preached on them in Black History Month in 1988, but their story has stuck with me over these 33 years.

Ellen was light-skinned because she was born from a rape of her mother by the white master.  She adored her mother and stayed close to her, but the master’s wife hated Ellen because she looked so much like her own children.  When Ellen was 11, she was given as a wedding present to the slaveholder’s daughter, who was moving to Macon.  We can only imagine the wrenching parting of Ellen and her mother, her only protector.  In Macon, however, she met William Craft, who was held as a slave but was also an accomplished carpenter.  They fell in love, but neither wanted to get married, since it was illegal for people held as slaves to be married.  In addition, William had seen his entire family – mother, father, sister, brother – sold off to other places.  He did not want to make such loving attachments again.

Their love was powerful, and they celebrated a “slave” marriage – not recognized by the state but recognized by God and by their community.  They made their choice.  William had another proposal:  freedom.  Ellen was afraid – so many tales of torture and maiming for those seeking to escape slavery.  The call of freedom prevailed, and they made another choice:  escape from slavery in December, 1848. They did not take the Underground Railroad – they took the overground railroad, literally, because they devised a bold and scary plan to escape.  They would travel as a “couple,” but Ellen would disguise as a sickly white man going north for medical care with her male slave accompanying her – that would be William.

It was bold because they would always be hidden in plain sight.  They would travel by train and boat, and they would stay in first class hotels where John C. Calhoun stayed.  They were challenged several times, and Ellen who was gentle and reticent by nature, had to learn to act like a dominant white man in control, including treating her beloved husband William, as a slave.  In his great and foundational book from 1872, “Underground Railroad,” conductor William Still has a long section about these bold refugees and their arrival in Philadelphia.  In it he writes of his amazement at these two and their bold plan.  Philly was still too close to the South, however, so they went up to Boston to live.  When Caroline and Susan and I were touring Boston in 2018, we saw the house where they lived.

They had to make several bold decisions in regard to freedom.  They had hoped to gain freedom, to be left alone and to raise a family, but they could not forget the sisters and brothers left in slavery in the South.  So, they agreed to go on Anti-Slavery tours in the North, seeking the abolition of slavery.  Northern audiences were stunned by their story, but even more they were stunned by Ellen Craft.  She was one of the first Black women in the country to speak out against slavery in a public way – at this time, Harriet Tubman was still in chains on the Eastern shore of Maryland, and Sojourner Truth was just beginning her travels.  Ellen’s skin color and her “surprising” intelligence was what astonished the white audiences – she looked and sounded just like one of them.  

Their notoriety was dangerous, and sure enough, after the passage of the heinous Fugitive Slave Act by Congress in 1850, the former “owners” sent slave-catchers to Boston to get them.  With help from Boston allies, they escaped again, this time to England to continue in the anti-slavery work,  in a country which banned slavery.  There they stayed almost 20 years, yet decided to return to the South after the Civil War had ended, facing many terrors.  They chose to leave the relatively safe confines of England and return to their home state of Georgia, to set up a school there for people formerly held as slaves.  They moved to Woodville, near Savannah, to set up their school, and the KKK attacked them again and again.  They held out for many years, until the KKK burned the school to the ground, and they moved to Charleston to continue their work.  Ellen died in 1891 and was buried back on their school ground in Woodville.

    This story is remarkable and complex, and I encourage folk to do more research on them.  Dorothy Sterling has an excellent story of their life and impact in her early book “Black Foremothers.” This month, “Unsung: Unheralded Narratives of American Slavery and Abolition,” edited by Michelle Commander out of the Schomburg Research Center, will have a long section on this amazing couple, based on William Craft’s own 1860 narrative.  Whether you use these resources or google them, find out more about them.  They are the kinds of folk we need in our days of rage and struggle:  it is time to choose, as they had to do.