Bibb, Henry Walton

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Bibb, Henry Walton

Sex:  Male

Born:  Shelby County, Kentucky, United States, Plantation
10 May 1815

Died:  Windsor, Ontario, Canada
1 August 1854

Activity/Profession:  Abolitionist, Slave Narrative Author, Slave, Lecturer, Newspaper Editor / Publisher

1815–1854
African American author and abolitionist who founded and edited Canada's first black newspaper.

The son of a Kentucky plantation slave and a state senator, Henry Walton Bibb was born a slave in Kentucky. His repeated attempts to escape bondage were successful in 1842 when he fled to Detroit, Michigan. By then his first wife, whom he married in 1833 and with whom he had a daughter, had been sold again. Bibb turned his energies to abolitionism.

In 1850 Bibb published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of an American Slave. That same year Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Laws, which forced him and his second wife to flee to Canada. A leader of the African American community there, Bibb founded the first black newspaper in Canada, Voice of the Fugitive, in 1851.

See also Abolitionism in the United States; Slave Narratives.

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