Henry Box Brown
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Henry "Box" Brown (1815-after 1878) was a slave in Virginia and is remembered by history for escaping in a shipping box sent north to the free state of Pennsylvania.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
Henry Brown was born into slavery in 1815 in Louisa County, Virginia. In 1830, he was sent to Richmond to work in a tobacco factory. There, he married another slave, Nancy, and the couple had at least three children. Brown used his wages to pay Nancy's master for the time she spent caring for them. However, in 1848, his wife and children were sold to a slave trader and sent to North Carolina. Henry Brown found himself helpless to prevent this.
Henry Brown then determined to escape to freedom. With the help of a friend, the freeman James C. A. Smith, and a sympathetic white shoemaker named Samuel Smith, Brown devised a plan to have himself shipped to a free state in a box, as if he were a container of dry goods. Brown paid the money he had saved from overwork to Samuel Smith, who made contact with the Philadelphia abolitionist James Miller McKim. McKim agreed to receive the box. Brown was nailed into a wooden box and shipped from Richmond to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a distance of about 275 miles (442 km). The box was only 2' 8" deep, 2' wide, and 3' long; Brown was five feet eight inches, and 200 pounds (91 kg). During the trip, which began on March 23, 1849, Brown's box traveled by many ways: wagon, then railroad, then steamboat, then wagon, then railroad, on a ferry, then railroad, and finally delivery wagon. At several points workers placed the box upside-down or handled it roughly, but at all times Brown remained still and gave no indication that he was inside. By both good fortune and strength of character, Brown endured the 26-hour-long journey.
Upon arrival in the "City of Brotherly Love", the box containing Brown was received by Miller McKim, William Still, and other members of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee. When Brown was released, one of those present remembered his first words as "How do you do, gentlemen?" He then sang a chosen Psalm from the Bible he had previously selected for his moment of freedom.
Henry Brown became a well-known speaker for the Anti-Slavery Society. He was bestowed the nickname of "Box" at a Boston antislavery convention in May 1849, and thereafter used the name Henry Box Brown. He published two versions of his autobiography, the first in Boston in 1849 and the second in England in 1851, Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown. Brown exhibited a moving panorama titled "Mirror of Slavery" in the northeastern U.S. until he was forced to move to England after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. Brown toured Britain with his antislavery panorama for the next ten years, performing several hundred times a year and visiting virtually every town and city over that period.
Brown stayed on the British show circuit for 25 years, until 1875. In the 1860s he began performing as a mesmerist, and some time after that as a conjuror, under the show names Prof. H. Box Brown and the African Prince. He married a second time and began a new family. In 1875 he returned to the U.S. with a family magic act. There is a later report of the Brown Family Jubilee Singers.
The Resurrection of Henry Box Brown at Philadelphia, a lithograph by Samuel Rowse, depicted Henry Brown emerging from the shipping box into freedom in Philadelphia. The lithograph was published to help raise funds to produce Brown's anti-slavery panorama. One of only three known originals is preserved in the collection of the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond.
In 1997, Brown was the subject of a Tony Kushner play entitled Henry Box Brown or the Mirror of Slavery.
[edit] See also
[edit] References and additional reading
[edit] Books
- Brown, Henry (2003). Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown. Oxford University Press. 0195148541. (Revised version with introduction by Richard Newman, foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.)
- Ruggles, Jeffrey (2003). The Unboxing of Henry Brown. Richmond, Virginia: Library of Virginia. 0884902005.
[edit] Internet
- Henry Box Brown, b. 1816 Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself full text of the Narrative
- Slave Trade Books website
- Digital History website, African American Voices
- African American History; Henry Box Brown webpage
- Virginia Historical Society
- Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper article February 1, 2003
