Craft, Ellen and William

By: Lisa Clayton Robinson

Source:

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

Craft, Ellen and William

African American abolitionists who were husband and wife. Ellen Craft (1826–1891) was a light-skinned black who, by passing as white, escaped from slavery with her husband. William Craft(1824–1900) is known for the autobiographical slave narrative that described their dramatic escape.

William and Ellen Craft's self-liberation is one of the most remarkable escapes ever recorded in an African American Slave Narrative. This is in part due to the brazenness of their plan: the Crafts traveled by public transportation all the way from their home in Georgia to freedom in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, even staying in hotels along the way. Their boldness was made possible by the brilliance of their disguise—which employed race, gender, and class passing to conceal Ellen, a black slave woman, as a white slaveholding man.

Ellen was born in Clinton, Georgia, to a biracial slave woman and her master and was so light-skinned that she was often mistaken for a member of her father's white family. This infuriated her mistress and, as a result, at age eleven Ellen was given as a wedding gift to a daughter who lived in Macon. There Ellen met William, whom she married in 1846. Two years later, the Crafts began to devise their escape plan, which involved Ellen posing as a white slaveholder traveling with his slave, William.

This plan required several levels of deception. Because a white woman would not travel alone with a male slave, Ellen had to pretend to be not only white but a white man. She cut her hair, changed her walk, and wrapped her jaw in bandages to disguise her lack of a beard. To hide her illiteracy, she wrapped her right arm in a sling to have a ready excuse for being unable to sign papers; and she explained all of the bandages by claiming to be an invalid traveling north to receive medical care. In this manner, the Crafts traveled from Georgia to Pennsylvania by train, steamer, and ferry without being discovered. They arrived in Philadelphia on Christmas Day in 1848.

In Philadelphia they were quickly befriended by abolitionists William Wells Brown and William Lloyd Garrison, who recognized the power the Crafts' story could have as an antislavery tool. The Crafts moved to Boston, Massachusetts, and began traveling as antislavery lecturers. But the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which mandated that Fugitive Slaves living anywhere in the United States must be returned to their owners, put their freedom in danger. Because of their celebrity, the Crafts were singled out by slavecatchers as targets. In November 1850 they fled to England, where they had five children, attended an agricultural training school, and continued to work as antislavery activists. Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, William's autobiography, was published in London in 1860.

In 1868, following the American Civil War, the Crafts returned to the United States with two of their children and settled in Ways Station, Georgia, near Savannah. There they farmed a cotton and rice plantation and attempted to start a school, although financial debts from the plantation and hostility from white neighbors ultimately led to the school's demise. Ellen Craft died in 1891 and, at her request, was buried under her favorite tree on their land. William eventually moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he died. Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom was reprinted in Arna Bontemps's 1969 collection Great Slave Narratives. The Crafts' story remains a testimonial to the intelligence, cunning, and courage many African American slaves brought to their determination to be free.

See also Fugitive Slave Laws.

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