What did ellen craft do
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Ellen and William Craft
American fugitive slaves and abolitionists
Ellen Craft (1826–1891) and William Craft (September 25, 1824 – January 29, 1900) were American abolitionists who were born into slavery in Macon, Georgia. They escaped to the Northern United States in December 1848 by traveling by train and steamboat, arriving in Philadelphia on Christmas Day. Ellen crossed the boundaries of race, class, and gender by passing as a white planter with William posing as her servant. Their escape was widely publicized, making them among the most famous fugitive slaves in the United States. Abolitionists featured them in public lectures to gain support in the struggle to end the institution.
As prominent fugitives, they were threatened by slave catchers in Boston after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, so the Crafts emigrated to England. They lived there for nearly two decades and raised five children. The Crafts lectured publicly about their escape and opposed the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. In 1860, they published a written ac
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Freedom seeker and abolitionist, Ellen Smith Craft notably disguised herself as a sickly, White gentleman in order to escape to freedom.
Born in 1826, Ellen Smith grew up as the daughter of a White slaveholder and an enslaved mother in Clinton, Georgia.1 Due to this parentage, she appeared "almost white." According to her husband William Craft,
in fact, [Ellen Smith] is so nearly [White] that the tyrannical old lady to whom she first belonged became so annoyed, at finding her frequently mistaken for a child of the family, that she gave her when eleven years of age to a daughter, as a wedding present.2
As a young enslaved woman, Ellen Smith met William Craft (also enslaved) in Macon, Georgia. While they wanted to obtain their freedom before marrying, Smith and Craft decided to "settle down in slavery."3 However, in 1848, William Craft came up with a plan that he believed could work. He told Ellen that if she disguised herself as an ill, young, White planter, and he played the role of the planter’s enslaved man, they could escape to freedom. Initially, Ellen Craft doubted
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Crossing the Color Line to Freedom
Biography
- Activism
- Family
- Immigration & Migration
- Slavery
- Slavery & Abolition, 1800-1860
William and Ellen Craft’s Daring Escape
William and Ellen Craft were a married couple whose escape from enslavement in Macon, Georgia, is remembered for its genius, danger, and daring. Ellen Craft, the child of her enslaver and her enslaved biracial mother, was a fair-skinned Black woman often mistaken as a member of her enslaver’s family. William, a dark-skinned Black man, devised a liberation plan where Ellen posed as a young white planter plagued with illnesses, while he played the role of her enslaved servant. Together, the couple relied on their intelligence and faith as they left Georgia in December of 1848, arriving in Philadelphia a few days later. The Crafts wrote of their escape from slavery in their autobiography, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, published in 1860.
Map of Philadelphia’s Free African American Households, 1790
An Ingenious Plan
Ellen Craft Disguised as a White Man
Born in 1824,
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