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A review by axmed
Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
Brown himself had a place on West Cedar Street—near the river, and the construction site for an elaborate new prison—but he hustled the Crafts to another home where he knew they would be safe. Soon they arrived at an unassuming brick structure on Southac Street, where they were welcomed by Lewis and Harriet Hayden, a husband-and-wife team of revolutionaries who met them, as they had received so many others, with open arms.
The couple had escaped bondage in Kentucky only six years earlier, aided by two White abolitionists, a preacher, and a teacher. Like the Crafts, the Haydens had worn disguises, their faces powdered with flour, to make them appear fair from afar. The couple made it to Canada, along with their son, but, concerned about those left behind, they returned to the United States, settling first in Michigan and, finally, in Boston. Now the family made its house on Southac Street an activist headquarters, along with Lewis Hayden’s secondhand clothing store.
The Hayden house was fronted with a short step and narrow door, but that was not the only way in or out. A second door led out from the basement, while a secret tunnel, a dark crawl-through space accessible only from the subbasement, allowed other visitors to enter and exit the house unseen, and traverse to an unknown location, possibly across the street. As many as thirteen people could hide at once on the top floor, and other Southern refugees ate, slept, and boarded in this building when William and Ellen first walked inside.
There were few places where they would have been better protected than in this house, this neighborhood. Through intricate alleys, fugitives could be ferreted away from enemies, while strangers easily lost their bearings. A spirit of resistance was alive and well. This was, after all, the adopted hometown of David Walker, a militant Black activist born of an enslaved father and free mother, who had claimed equal citizenship for Black Americans and whose words had sent chills of terror throughout the South—tremors still palpable two decades later.
In his Appeal… to the Colored Citizens of the World, a pamphlet he had secreted South, Walker had exhorted Black Americans to rise up with arms, if necessary, to overthrow those who enslaved them and claim their rightful place as equal citizens of the nation they had helped build. “Look upon your mother, wife, and children,” he famously commanded, “and answer God Almighty; and believe this, that it is no more harm for you to kill a man, who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty.” Walker called out the hypocrisy of the clergy and White Americans, cannily quoting the Declaration of Independence and asking, “Do you understand your own language?”
The couple had escaped bondage in Kentucky only six years earlier, aided by two White abolitionists, a preacher, and a teacher. Like the Crafts, the Haydens had worn disguises, their faces powdered with flour, to make them appear fair from afar. The couple made it to Canada, along with their son, but, concerned about those left behind, they returned to the United States, settling first in Michigan and, finally, in Boston. Now the family made its house on Southac Street an activist headquarters, along with Lewis Hayden’s secondhand clothing store.
The Hayden house was fronted with a short step and narrow door, but that was not the only way in or out. A second door led out from the basement, while a secret tunnel, a dark crawl-through space accessible only from the subbasement, allowed other visitors to enter and exit the house unseen, and traverse to an unknown location, possibly across the street. As many as thirteen people could hide at once on the top floor, and other Southern refugees ate, slept, and boarded in this building when William and Ellen first walked inside.
There were few places where they would have been better protected than in this house, this neighborhood. Through intricate alleys, fugitives could be ferreted away from enemies, while strangers easily lost their bearings. A spirit of resistance was alive and well. This was, after all, the adopted hometown of David Walker, a militant Black activist born of an enslaved father and free mother, who had claimed equal citizenship for Black Americans and whose words had sent chills of terror throughout the South—tremors still palpable two decades later.
In his Appeal… to the Colored Citizens of the World, a pamphlet he had secreted South, Walker had exhorted Black Americans to rise up with arms, if necessary, to overthrow those who enslaved them and claim their rightful place as equal citizens of the nation they had helped build. “Look upon your mother, wife, and children,” he famously commanded, “and answer God Almighty; and believe this, that it is no more harm for you to kill a man, who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty.” Walker called out the hypocrisy of the clergy and White Americans, cannily quoting the Declaration of Independence and asking, “Do you understand your own language?”