Undergrounds Before Rail: Escaping Slavery, Claiming Liberty

Freedom was not a concept just for white male Puritans. The right to consent to governance, the right to liberties, equal treatment under law - these were claimed by enslaved people in the only way they could - by escaping. Award-winning historian Margaret Newell, joined by Slave Legacy History Coalition co-founder Egypt Lloyd, explores the network of Indigenous and Black people helping enslaved individuals to escape - the stories of those who fled. A rarely revealed story of resistance to tyranny, juxtaposed to Puritan rights and freedoms.

This event will be live at, and live-streamed from, Raab Auditorium and the main Boston Public Library. Join by Zoom or join us in person!

Most Americans are familiar with the history of the 19th century Underground Railroad. Formerly enslaved people wrote autobiographies and newspapers published escape accounts, and later historians interviewed participants. We know much less about the experience of Native Americans and Africans who attempted to escape the tyranny of slavery in the colonial era, whose stories often only appear as testimony in courts or in runaway advertisements.

Frederick Douglass and other 19th century fugitives escaped via stagecoach, train and steamship to the North. There, they entered thriving African American communities who assisted them. In a time before toll roads, transit, and diverse urban centers, how did people escape, where did they go, what networks existed to help them, and what challenges did they confront in maintaining freedom? What did freedom mean in an era where no free soil existed, when the bonds of slavery were being tightened by colonial administrations at the behest of slaveholders? The treaty that ended the first major Anglo-Indigenous conflict, the 1637 Pequot War, included a fugitive slave clause. As colonial cities and transportation networks grew, so did newspaper runaway ads, pass requirements, and policing of people of color.

Professor Newell will share the stories of Native Americans and African Americans who tried to claim their liberty and the people who helped them, 1620-1750, with respondent Egypt Lloyd.

Many of the escapees tried to head home, whether that meant to Pequot, Wampanoag and Narragansett reserves, or La Florida, or even Africa. Some traversed the Atlantic Ocean. Others focused on physical mobility and maintaining family and marriage ties through temporary absence. Still others organized mass escapes that resembled slave uprisings. Meanwhile, communities and individuals shared successful strategies for fighting slavery’s tyranny. They aided fugitives at enormous risk to themselves.

Margaret Newell is the distinguished arts and sciences professor and professor of history at Ohio State University. She is the author of Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists and the Origins of American Slavery (Cornell University Press, 2015; paperback 2016) and From Dependency to Independence: Economic Revolution in Colonial New England (Cornell University Press, 1998; paperback 2015). She won numerous awards for Brethren by Nature, including the Peter Gomes Memorial Prize, Massachusetts Historical Society, and the James A. Rawley Prize for best book dealing with the history of race relations in the United States, Organization of American Historians. Brethren by Nature was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, an Andrew Mellon Fellowship at the Huntington Library and a fellowship at the John Nicholas Brown Center. She has also received awards for her articles.

She is currently working on three books, one provisionally entitled Undergrounds Before the Age of Rail: Escaping Slavery and Helping Slaves Escape in Colonial America.

Find out more about Margaret's scholarship at her website and OSU's history department.

Egypt Lloyd is a co-founder of the Slave Legacy History Coalition, established in 2021. She has served as a project advisor for History Cambridge on the Tory Row's Hidden Black History project and, in 2022, was honoured to be invited as a panelist by Harvard University at the University of Virginia's Legacies of Slavery conference.

In addition to her work in history, Egypt is a certified commercial pilot accredited by the Federal Aviation Administration. She is currently pursuing a degree in Aeronautics and aerospace engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Prior to her foray into history and aviation, Egypt leveraged her extensive experience in the real estate industry as an accomplished senior government underwriter for more than 20 years. She is also the creator and founder of the Neat and Orderly Tots enrichment program, an early childhood project integrated into schools throughout Georgia and Colorado.

is a consortium of individuals, institutions and historical organizations dedicated to the preservation of the history of enslaved people in Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded in 2021 by the Lloyd family descendants of Tony, Cuba and Darby, whose enslaver was the wealthy merchant and Harvard donor Isaac Royall Jr. Egypt Lloyd is one of those descendants.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT MARGARET NEWELL

Website: http://u.osu.edu/newell.20

Some articles on www.researchgate.net

Twitter: @ProfNewellOSU

Principal Investigator, Mellon Foundation Higher Learning Grant, 2023-2026

2025 Mary Ball Washington Scholar Designee, Fulbright Ireland

PUBLICATIONS AND INTERVIEWS

, winner of the 2016 James A. Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians for the best book on race relations in the U.S. and Peter Gomes Prize for non-fiction.

From

“The Rising of the Indians”: Or, the Native American Revolution of (16)’76

· Invited scholarly talk/Public Program at the Harvard-Radcliffe conference, , Nov. 3 , 2023

· TV Interview with the Boston Neighborhood News Network on the Pequot War and its relevance today, aired Nov. 25.

· Public Program, “Native Americans and African Americans in 18th Century Boston”, panel discussion moderated by Prof. Jamie Crumley for the Old North Church public history initiative, Boston, April 2023

· Public program: “Native American Slavery in New England,” 1619 discussion series, Cleveland Heights library, August 31, 2022 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYawdZFYJZzr8qvWhe3Gtnz8ReYO18Sal

· "Roger Williams and Slavery," op-ed, Providence Journal and Bulletin, August 30, 2020 https://www.providencejournal.com/opinion/20200829/our-hidden-history-roger-williams-and-slaveryrsquos-origins

· "History Holds Lessons for Nation in Grips of Pandemic," op-ed, Columbus Dispatch, August 1, 2020, https://www.dispatch.com/opinion/20200801/history-holds-lessons-for-nation-in-grips-of-pandemic/1

· "Slavery Persisted in New England Until the 19th Century," History Channel, June 28, 2020

· Ben Franklin's World--A Podcast About Early American History, episode 220, Jan. 2019

· Colonial America Depended on the Enslavement of Indigenous People, Smithsonian Magazine, Jan. 29, 2016

· America's Other Original Sin, Slate, Jan. 18, 2016

· American Indian Slavery: The Sinners and Secrets of ‘Brethren by Nature’, Indian Country, Jan. 18, 2016

· Horrors of Native Slavery in New England Revealed in New Book, Indian Country, Dec. 31, 2015

See also Freedom on the Move, a public source on runaway slaves and resistance.

This talk will be live-streamed and recorded, and posted on historicbostons.org and our YouTube channel.

The opinions expressed in this presentation are those of the presenters and not necessarily those of the Partnership of Historic Bostons.

Image: Eighteenth century runaway slave advert placed in New York by James Banks, slaveholder. He warned ships captains "not to carry off the above Negro" and promised the reward to anyone who captured Will, described as a "lively", "very talkative fellow." Wikicommons

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