- It's been said that the history of an era is written in the countless acts of individuals doing their best to live their own lives.

Today's guest shares the story of one married enslaved couple whose personal journey literally and figuratively charts the course of the United States in the dozen years before the American Civil War.

She's Ilyon Woo, this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) Hello, and welcome to "Story in the Public Square," where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also at Salve's Pell Center.

- This week we're joined by Ilyon Woo, the author of the critically-acclaimed "Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom."

She joins us today from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Ilyon thank you so much for being with us.

- It's great to be here with you today.

- You know, this is really a masterful piece of scholarship and storytelling, but for those who have not yet read the book, and they all should go out and read it, but for those who haven't, give us a quick overview of what the book is about.

- Sure, so this is the story of William and Ellen Craft, an actual husband and wife, enslaved in Macon, Georgia, who flee in this incredible disguise.

So it's Ellen who pretends to be a rich, white, disabled enslaver, while William pretends to be her slave.

So they journey a thousand miles, from Georgia all the way up to Philadelphia, and beyond.

But that's just the beginning of their story.

- It's remarkable, not just their story, but it captures so much of the reality of life in the pre-war South, and the pre-war North, for that matter.

How did you come to tell this story?

- Hmm, well, I first encountered the Crafts through their own written words.

So they published a narrative in 1860.

So this is about a dozen years after they made their escape.

And it's an incredible book.

It's very short, action packed.

But I read it.

I couldn't stop turning the pages.

I was a graduate student at at the time.

I was in a library, but I felt completely transported, and I just wanted to know more.

- You know, I mentioned there's so much here, but we're reading this book in 2023 against the backdrop of movements in various parts of the country to almost edit the history that's taught in America.

There's the issue in Florida with the AP African American History course.

There's been an effort to sort of, it seems, minimize some of the horrors of chattel slavery in the American experience.

What do we miss when we don't talk about the totality of that experience?

Because sometimes in passing fashion, and sometimes head on, you really expose that underbelly of what it meant to be a slave in America.

- I think we miss the reality, honestly.

I mean, we miss the reality of what our nation was like, and everything that leads up to the present moment.

And I also think that we miss a critical teaching opportunity for students, because I mean, if I think about this as a mother, and how I want my children to learn history, I don't want them to learn anthems and just a glorified vision of what our nation was like.

I want them to understand the whole picture, and the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, as a way of also understanding that countries change, people change.

There's not anything, there's no such thing as perfection, and that we are a work in progress.

- So let's start at the beginning of the book.

Where were the Crafts living at the start of the book, and what were they doing?

Obviously they were enslaved.

But give us a little bit of a breakdown of the geography and what their talents and abilities were.

- Yeah, so they were living in Macon, Georgia when the story opens.

This is in the middle of the state, deep in the South, in the middle of the South.

And you know, oftentimes when we think about, or we popularly imagine slavery, there are images of plantations, right, that are conjured.

That's not the reality of the slavery that the Crafts were experiencing In 1848.

He was a skilled artisan.

So was she.

He was a cabinet maker who was employed in an urban city, and as such, he had a greater degree of mobility and sort of independence than most enslaved people of this time.

Ellen Craft was also a skilled artist.

She was a dressmaker.

And she was enslaved by her biological half-sister.

So she worked in the home, but she also had an independent space where she sewed and made clothes.

- So what prompted their desire to escape?

And I guess they planned their escape over the course of four days, which is a pretty quick period to set off on a very risky endeavor.

What prompted them to say, "We've got to go"?

- So it was incredibly condensed, this decision to flee, but they'd actually been thinking about it for quite a long time.

And in fact, they delayed their marriage initially because Ellen especially didn't want to be married, didn't want to start a family until after her freedom, and thus the freedom of her future children would be secure.

But what happens in these couple of days before they go, it's complicated.

I layer that into the story.

There are a variety of factors involving the business prospects of their enslavers.

But the impetus that they give in their book, there are two, one is that they they quote, actually, the Declaration of Independence as an impetus and a motivator.

They'd heard lines from the Declaration of Independence while they were in bondage, and this they say inspired them.

They also wanted to escape for the future of their children, again, because they couldn't bear the thought of replicating the same kinds of traumas that they had experienced themselves in childhood.

And it all came to a head in those critical days in 1848.

- So this was 1848, as you said.

What were they risking in their attempt to escape?

What was the ultimate penalty?

What was the cost potentially to them.

- Their lives.

I mean, this is actually why they say they put off this decision to run for such a long time, because the stakes were incredibly high.

They had these relatively, as they put it, privileged positions in bondage, and they knew that if they were caught, that they would not be returned back to those relatively favored positions where they were working, you know, in a cabinet maker shop, in the home, in a study area, or sorry, a cabin.

But they would be sent to the fields or sent to different parts of the country.

They would be separated, and they, as they write in their narrative, they would likely be tortured, made an example of, because when you're trying to escape bondage, it's not just you yourself that are on the line, it's the community.

- So I wanna get back to the risk.

Do you have any sense, what was it in their characters, in their psychological makeup, that made them, allowed them, more correctly, to take that risk?

I mean, there were certainly many people who would've liked to have escaped who did not take that risk, did not take that chance, understandably.

What set them apart in this regard?

- That's a really interesting question.

I mean, they were incredibly strong, resilient, independent people.

They also had access, they had access, I think, to information and opportunity in ways that were rare, because of where they were working, because of how they had been raised, experiences they had known their entire lives.

In some ways, you could argue, that their entire lives were, prepared them for this incredible moment.

- Now, Ilyon, one of the things that haunts them, I think, throughout the book, and you really explore this in a couple of different ways, is the threat of family separation, the breaking up of slave families, the selling of, you know, fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers and children to different slave owners, who would take them as their property wherever they wanted to go, with no sort of recognition of family.

Can you talk a little bit about how pervasive that practice was and how much that haunted, you know, not just Ellen and William, but slaves living in the South in general?

- Yes, thank you.

I mean, this is a question that haunts their lives, that haunts their story, that haunts the entire practice of bondage in this period.

So both William and Ellen Craft had personally known this trauma.

So even though they begin the book by saying that their positions, their experiences in bondage were, quote, unquote, "better than most," that they had not known the worst, they had experienced this themselves.

So William had seen his parents sold away from him, and then each one of his siblings, one by one, on the auction block.

Ellen Craft, when she was 11 years old, she was separated from her mother, given away as a wedding present.

And this can happen to anybody.

So at any moment, one can be, you know, on the whim or the desire or the changed fortunes of an enslaver .

There's absolutely no knowing when this can happen to anyone.

- You mentioned the whim and the desire of the slave owner.

The other thing that you discuss in the book is the ever-present threat of sexual violence, particularly towards enslaved women.

Can you talk a little bit about that, and again, the impact that it had on Ellen and William?

- So this is actually a matter that comes up repeatedly throughout their narrative.

The Crafts don't talk, they don't say anything specific about Ellen's own experiences, or for her mother's, for that matter.

Her mother was 18 when she became pregnant with Ellen.

Just a teenager.

And there's no such thing as consent between a child who is enslaved by, and her enslaver.

James Smith was an attorney who was twice the age of Maria.

He had, I think, nine children already at the time.

And there was no such thing as consent between them.

And this is a narrative line that haunts the whole book.

They're constantly talking about the possibility of rape.

They don't use that word in the narrative, but the specter of it is there.

- So to get to Philadelphia, which was their first destination from Georgia, they had to travel by train, by ship.

That required resources, knowledge.

How did they navigate those hurdles?

These were two enslaved people who had no experience with such travel, such an adventure, if you wanna use that word.

They made it, but how did they do that?

- That was one of the big questions that I had, honestly, when I started this, because it just seemed unfathomable that one could map this incredibly complicated and intricate plot out of the South when...

I mean, actually, I've looked at these old maps and train schedules and everything.

I mean, it's a mess.

It's really hard to navigate even if you have all those materials, even if you have the literacy and the access, which obviously, as enslaved people, did not.

So I think this again points to the Crafts' incredible resourcefulness and intelligence, and also access to information.

So William worked part time at a hotel.

Ellen also worked in the home of her enslaver, her sister, her biological sister, who was officially her enslaver.

Her sister's husband was actually a railroad entrepreneur, who helped bring the railroad into Macon.

So Ellen was sort of a witness to all that.

But I also made an archival discovery, which is that Ellen Craft in particular might have traveled that way before.

- There also was at least one stroke of luck.

As they were boarding a ship in Charleston, South Carolina, that stroke of luck happened.

What happened?

They were challenged at the custom house.

Tell us what happened that allowed them to get on that ship.

- Oh, I would say it's not just one stroke of luck.

I mean, it's like repeated strokes across the canvas of their experience.

But I mean, there's so many moments where I know what's gonna happen, but I was at the edge of my seat thinking, "This is impossible!

Like, how are they gonna get out of this?"

I mean, it's really crazy.

But Charleston was definitely a big moment.

So they are there.

They need to buy the tickets that will actually take them all the way from Charleston to Philadelphia.

Oh, I should stop and say that one thing that was not lucky is that it turned out they were supposed to just have one steam ship that would've taken them directly to Philadelphia from Charleston.

But that ship is not running anymore.

So they have to take this incredibly complicated, tortuous path with multiple, multiple stops.

So they have to buy this big ticket that's gonna take them to Philadelphia overland, following the mail route.

And they get there and, you know, Ellen has to sign a book, and she has to claim her slave.

The person who's about to sell her the ticket challenges her on this when she... Actually, I should back up and say, she's wearing her arm in a sling to suggest that she's disabled, and she can't use her writing hand to write, because she can't write.

She's been denied literacy.

And so previously she's been able to sort of cover for that, but here in Charleston, the ticket person will have nothing of this.

He will not sign the book for her, and so she has to improvise - And well, you'll have to read, I suppose to, to know how that story ends.

But they make it to Philadelphia, we know, and beyond.

But the thing that strikes me is that so much of this journey is so dramatic and so powerfully told by you in this book.

Why isn't there a movie?

Why don't we know this story?

You know, I'm 51 years old.

How come I'm just learning about Ellen and William Craft at this point in my life.

- Well, you know, as the descendant, one of the descendants of the Crafts, who I have the honor and the privilege of knowing, has said before, I think whether you know the story depends on who you are and sort of where you're coming from and what kind of information and stories you have access to.

So certainly, the Crafts' descendants have cherished and preserved this story for years.

And it's actually been, you know, on curricula in academia for quite a while.

That being said, they don't have the kind of recognition that, say, Douglas or Truth or, you know, Tubman, these people that we know just by one name even, have.

And it's a complicated question.

I think part of the challenge with the Crafts' narrative, or their story, is that it challenges us on so many levels.

I mean, Ellen Craft is breaking boundaries of race, class, ability, and gender.

In some ways, it's like the perfect story for this moment.

- It really is.

We chatted a little bit before we started taping about this, but there's a scene where they're making the last dash to freedom, as it were, from Baltimore to Philadelphia via train.

And as I was reading it, I found my mind sort of flirting back and forth with science fiction novels that I've read, where there's sort of a post-apocalyptic America, and there are defended borders, and there's a lawlessness that sort of permeates the border because of the illicit trade going back and forth.

And this, your telling of their approach to Philadelphia, evoked that for me.

And I also thought of another story, with a young man in Berlin in 1986, going back and forth across the old inner-German border to see his family.

And I had to stop myself and say, "But wait a minute.

These were Americans being hunted on American soil because they were slaves."

That's history.

And so, I don't know.

I should ask a question here.

How is it that we are talking about, in 2023, diluting this history and the way we teach it, the whole debate about critical race theory, and everything that goes with that, when so much of what you're describing here, everything that you're describing here, actually happened?

- Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, this is the reality, this dystopia, that is also the imagined utopia of our country.

And it's not just in the South, right?

I mean, the Crafts make that incredible escape out of the South, and there are those harried, you know, terrifying moments, where they're near capture in the South, but it's actually in the North that they are hunted.

You know, the Fugitive Slave Act passes, and then it's then, in Boston, you know, where I am, that the slave hunters come, and that all Americans, under the terms of the Fugitive Slave Act, are called upon essentially to act as part of a slave-hunting posse.

I mean, you would have to do that if you were called on to serve.

And it's not in in Georgia that they're actually physically running and hiding.

It's in Boston.

- So I'm still thinking about the movie.

There should be, there must be a movie.

And I'm thinking of the director of "Amistad" and "Schindler's List" and so many other great films, Steven Spielberg, should do it.

That's not my question.

They went from Philadelphia to Boston, and then they had to leave Boston.

First, why did they have to leave Philadelphia, why did they have to leave Boston, and from Boston they go to England?

Can you summarize that part of the book for us?

- Yeah, I mean, in a nutshell, legally, they're not safe anywhere in America.

That's true even before the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 passes, 'cause there's already a Fugitive Slave Act.

There's already, you know, a clause in the Constitution known as the Fugitive Slave Clause, although it's not called that officially, that makes it so that their enslavers are empowered to claim them or their services wherever they are in the country.

So when they arrive in Philadelphia, it's one of the first questions they ask.

"Are we safe?

Can we rest here?"

And they're told, "No."

And actually, at that point, they could probably have taken, they could definitely have taken a much safer route out of the country, and maybe the story would kind of end.

But what happens instead is they get this invitation, because people are hearing, I mean, chatter starts to go around about their story from the minute they land in Philadelphia, and people wanna know their story.

And abolitionists, including a self-emancipated lecturer and bestselling author named William Wells Brown, he hears the story, and he knows that America needs to hear it as well, and he invites them to take this story on the road.

And amazingly, I mean, they've experienced this lifetime of trauma, they've come off this, you know, they're barely a month out of bondage when they take this incredible story on the road.

- Why do you think that they were so successful on that lecture circuit?

What about them was so compelling?

- Well, I mean, even just superficially speaking, people are noting constantly how good-looking and well-spoken and, you know, charismatic they are, so they definitely have sort of a star quality, like a natural star quality from the get-go.

But I would say that it's especially Ellen Craft who becomes this incredible draw on account of her light complexion.

People, when they think of bondage or slavery at this time, they think, again, of plantation slavery, they think of dark-complected people.

And then, when they see Ellen, who, as it's repeatedly remarked, who looks to white audiences as if she could be one of them, you know, they say, "Looking at her, she could be my daughter, my sister, myself," this for them is incredibly shocking, 'cause in that moment they see somebody in bondage, or formerly in bondage, who is not an other, but is just like the self.

And it's her, the humanity that she evokes, that common shared identity, that human identity, that I think really moves people as never before.

- So eventually, with the Emancipation Proclamation, they return to America from England, and they go back to Georgia.

What did they do there?

- This is yet another incredible twist in their story, because repeatedly, you know, they could be safe, they could have, you know, a comfortable life in England, but no, they decide to come back to America, and not just America, they could end up in Boston, they decide to go deep down South, back to where they came from.

What they decide to do is start a farming and educational cooperative for freed people.

And it's an incredible vision they have.

They start in South Carolina.

They are attacked by Night Riders.

They barely make it out in their night clothes.

The place is burned down.

At that point they decide to do it again, and this time actually directly in Georgia, in Bryan County, Georgia.

They decide to build a new school, a new church, a new world.

- The first chapter of the book is called "Overture," and you write that, quote, "Though propelled by narrative, this work is not fictionalized."

Would you explain what that means?

- Yes, so I follow the bones of the story that the Crafts provide for us.

Actually, there's a lot that they don't tell, so I have to bring in all these different sources, and I have to fill in parts of the story that they don't explain.

For example, they say very little about the experiences in bondage.

They really focus a lot on the journey itself.

They say nothing about the abolitionist lecture circuit, either in England or the United States.

So it's a very focused story, but in filling out the rest of it, I didn't want to leave anything, I didn't want to use my imagination anywhere.

I wanted to use, be very faithful to the historical sources.

So anytime there's any description of their feeling, for example, any words that they might have expressed, that's all from documented sources.

- So a very quick question, 'cause we don't have much time.

I wanted to talk a little bit about Craft.

Before this taping, you and I discussed all the time it took, all the places you went, including overseas.

How do you remain focused on a subject, a great subject, a great book here, for all that period of time?

I mean, it's just, it's it's really pretty incredible.

- [Jim] You got about 40 seconds, Ilyon.

- Thank you.

I mean, honestly, the focus wasn't a challenge, because it was an obsession.

I mean, the story had so many questions, so much pain, so much beauty, so much love, that I just wanted to know more.

And really, every minute with it, every mile of travel with it, was an honor and a pleasure.

- Well, the book itself is, it's hard to call a book about slavery and escape from slavery a pleasure.

But this is an important read and a powerful read, and we thank you for sharing it with us.

She's Ilyon Woo, the book is "Master Slave Husband Wife," and you ought to check it out.

That's all the time we have this week, but if you wanna know more about "Story in the Public Square," you can find us on social media, or visit pellcenter.org, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music)