001Hello and welcome to the state library. My name is April Pascuchi and I'm the ref legislative reference librarian here. Before we get started, I'd just like to thank the Bureau of the State House and House Broadcast Services for their help in setting up for today's event. I'd also like to note this event is being livereamed and recorded to be made available on our YouTube channel. Today I'm excited to introduce Ilon Woo. Woo is a New York Times best-selling author. Her writing appearing in the Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and more. Today, Woo will be speaking on her latest book, Master Slave, Husband Wife, an epic journey from slavery to freedom. Master Slave Husband Wife truly is the epic story of Ellen and William Craft. In 1848, The Crafts, a young enslaved couple made
002the decision to flee Mon Georgia to seek freedom in the north. A journey like no other. Ellen disguised herself as an older wealthy white gentleman traveling with his slave William. Woo's meticulously researched book follows the Crafts as they make their way to Philadelphia, Boston, and eventually Canada. The craft's journey is one of freedom, self-emancipation, and love. At the end of the presentation, we will invite you to ask any questions you may have for the author. Just raise your hand and we will hand you the mic. Um, also, the author has brought copies of the book for purchase after the talk. Now, I'd like to turn it over to Ilon. So, first, uh, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, April, for that lovely introduction. And it's just, you know, it's thrilling for me
003to be here and to be able to see out this window the landscape in which William and Ellen Craft, the heroes of this story that I tell, uh, where they arrived and lived and hid and fought for justice. You can feel history so palpably in Boston, can't you? So, what I'd like to do today for about the next half an hour is three things. First, I'll give you a little bit of an overview uh into the story so we're all kind of on the same page. Um and tell you a little bit about how I entered into it. I'll talk about my research process um the process of writing into this mystery because it really was kind of like a detective story as it unfolded for me. And finally, what I'd like to do uh
004most of all is to focus on this neighborhood which played such an integral role in the craft's experiences here. Um and hopefully it might change the way you look at some of the places um and some of the historic people uh that you may pass on your way to work every day and um introduce you to new ones. So, I'm really excited to get to show a couple pretty pictures because usually I'm talking and in a conversation I don't get to share these pictures, but there are some really gorgeous ones of William and Ellen Craft. So, this is William and Ellen Craft. Uh, you see William on the right on the far right uh Ellen in the middle in they're both at about middle age there and on the far left you have Ellen soon
005after they made their escape in this famous disguise. So this was a real life husband and wife uh wife and husband a married couple. It's very much of a love story uh who disguise themselves as master and slave. So William is a cabinet maker by trade. Uh Ellen is a dress maker, a seamstress and the daughter of an enslaved woman named Maria and her first enslaver from whom she inherited this very light complexion which she used to pass. So she crossed lines of not just she crossed lines of race and gender and ability and class the four lines by which we often define ourselves even today um in order to make this incredible thousand mile journey. More pictures. So they were not running and hiding going on any kind of underground railroad because there was
006no underground railroad that reached this far into the south into Mon Georgia. Instead, there was a real railroad and they took that. So, they rode the major transportational technologies of their day. There's a transportation revolution underway, information revolution underway, a democratic revolt going on around the world and they rode on all of these winds on this journey. So they went in plain sight taking these trains, taking these steamboats and it was a fraught a perilous journey uh because of who they were but also because this technology was really new. Uh there was a tendency for things to um explode. You know animals might get in on the way on the tracks. It was so easy to be late. Um it was so easy for something to to literally combust. So the fact that they were
007able to travel in this way at all and make their destination was in itself a feat. This is their story. This is the entry point that I found into their story when I was a graduate student over 20 years ago. So this was a signed reading for a class that I was taking on the literature of passing which Robert O'Neil was teaching at Columbia University. I hope he's still teaching this class there today because for me it was really transformative. Um, out of a lot of amazing texts, this one really stood out. I mean, I remember I was in the Columbia Library was which is kind of like this one. You feels very regal. The lights were low. I had this very bad copy, this photocopy uh of the story in my hands and then
008it just the whole thing seemed to come alive like in technicolor. It's a real page turner. It's only about 60 pages long, but the crafts recount with incredible emotion and incredibly vivid detail. uh mostly the story of how they journeyed from Mon uh to Philadelphia. So there was all this incredible detail because the story was so incredible that even at the time of their escape they needed proof. There were people who were unbelieving that this actually could have happened. Um, so they provide these really sort of, you know, detailed explanations of how and where they went from point to point. And yet there's a lot that they could not say. So one of the reasons actually that they were telling the story at this time in 1860, a dozen years after their escape, is that
009they were raising funds for family members who were still who still remained in bondage, including Ellen's beloved mother, Maria. So her mother was still enslaved not by her father and um her biological father and first enslaver but by his widow as they make clear on the very first page of the story. So this is the woman who was responsible for parting for separating Ellen and uh her mother when Ellen was 11 years old. This woman um Eliza Cleveland Smith was so bothered or annoyed to quote the crafts by the sight of a little girl who looked so much like her biological father and who was so often mistaken for a legitimate child of the family that she decided at the soonest opportunity that she was going to give this child away. So when her own
010daughter Eliza Eliza Smith who became Eliza Collins married at age 18, Mistress Smith had Eli had Ellen given as a wedding present to her own biological halfsister to be owned there thereafter as property. So this is sort of the some of the backstory, some of what happens before uh the the adventure story begins in their narrative, but there isn't much of it in there. And that's one of the things that I wanted to know. I wanted to know, you know, why did the crafts escape right when they did? They say in the beginning of their narrative, they wanted liberty. They wanted it for themselves. They wanted it for children uh who who they wanted to be born in freedom. They did not want to they refused to replicate the trauma that they themselves had experienced
011as children in being stolen from their own parents. But beyond that, I wanted to know is there something specific in their world, in their times that drove them with the urgency that they had. Um, they make it very clear that they knew that they had quote unquote privileged positions in bondage, that they are situations could have been far worse. Um, why did they risk everything so quickly uh at in the last days of 1848? That was one question. I wanted to know who were the people in their world. Um, the people that they loved, the people that they left behind. I wanted to also feel the texture of their times. I wanted to know like what was it like to actually ride one of these trains in the period of these very new trains that
012were on the verge of combustion. Um, what it was it like for Ellen Craft to wear these gentlemen's clothes? What did those the what did that feel like on her body? and who most of all were the crafts behind this intriguing disguise? So, I duck into these questions um at libraries like this one uh at archives all across New England, including at the Boston uh Aanium, which is right next door, and you can go visit and actually see a letter written in Ellen Craft's hand. Um, I traveled all the way down to the south and I traveled abroad because that's where the crafts end up living for 20 years because they have to escape not just the south but the entire United States in order to be free. And I found much more than I
013ever thought possible. And one example I will give you, you see on the left, you see underlined in orange, a girl named Ellen is I found the actual legal document by which Ellen Craft's original enslavers, this is her father's hand, uh give her as property to Eliza Smith Collins. And it's really chilling to see this document which I discovered in a courthouse in Mon um opening this gigantic old musty tome seeing this beautiful fluoride hand and seeing um the name Ellen Craft and also seeing on this very same page the word love because James Smith writes that out of the love he bears for his daughter and he's talking about Eliza Collins here. He's going to give her this property. He's going to give her this girl named Ellen who is his unnamed other daughter
014um another daughter he's going to give her away and not only Ellen but her increase which means that not only Ellen but her children and their children in perpetuity are committed to being property of Eliza Smith Collins and her heirs. If it weren't for the Civil War, if it weren't for um Ellen's incredible escape and courage, you know, this could have gone all the way to today by this by the terms of this document. So, I could go on for a very long time about the exciting research that I did and this the southern journey which is really um I mean it just it kept me even though I knew obviously it was going to happen, it kept me at the end edge of my seats. I mean they are incredibly enterprising and the risks
015the people they meet on the way um the dangers they are encounter are just uh beyond what I can sort of relate very quickly here because what I'd like to do today is focus on the craft's experience after their famous journey because the journey takes us about a third of the way through this book but then much of the book also has to do with what else was required for that of them in order to achieve their freedom. And specifically, I would like to return now to the to the neighborhood in which we now stand because as fraught as the journey was from the south, it's actually here in Boston that the crafts were in the greatest peril as slave hunters came up in pursuit from Georgia. So I will focus here on three major
016uh landmarks. The first, this is something that if you work here, you see this statue every day. Does anybody know who this person might be? Yes. Daniel Webster. And what do you know about Daniel Webster? >> Yes. Yes. Yes, those are definit those are three hallmarks of Senator uh Daniel Webster's Congressman Daniel Webster and Secretary of State Daniel Webster's um life. A lot of people tend to get him mixed up with Noah Webster and think he has something to do with the dictionary um but there's no relation there. He was a uh powerful orator called Godlike Daniel, sometimes also dark Dan. Um for his in in very uh incredible um oratory oftentimes he spoke about the union and about freedom. In the Webster Hayne debates he gave one of his most famous lines in 1830,
017liberty and union now and forever one and inseparable. But there is more to this gentleman than meets the eye. You see these pictures of these guys and they look he looks kind of grim and cadaavverous wouldn't you say in this um 1850 image uh you know very sort of proper and serious but actually this man was known in his era I'm going to give you some of the side juicy details here as a man of enormous appetites of all kinds. So he was a gourmand he actually you know he loved oysters as he enjoyed the Union Oyster House not too far from here. Um he was the only congressperson who had his own little drinking room on the cap. He liked to drink. Uh so he liked the food, he liked the drink, he also
018liked women. And I have shrunk this down very small because I wasn't sure who's going to be seeing this. Um but when I went to the Daniel Webster estate in Marshfield, this very lovely, sweet elderly dosent said to me, "Have you heard about the picture?" And I was like, "The picture?" And she said, "Well, they showed this at one point and she was talking about an exhibition and apparently you actually there was this little like a cloth covered thing and you actually had to go and put your eye right over it to be able to see what was inside." And here it is. Beauty revealed, also known as the first boob selfie in American history. This is a portrait, a miniature portrait, self-portrait made by Sarah Goodrich of her own body. And it's small enough
019that you could hold it, which I'm sure he did, in the palm of your hand or put it in your pocket. So this is this kind of like a unseen view of the man. And I tell you this um not just to give you the salacious details but to give you an idea of how what I wanted to do is really kind of deliver these people not just as these people on a pedestal that you have here um but as real life flesh and blood people with their own desires their own weaknesses uh their own passions uh their own personalities. So maybe you like I will now forever pass by this picture of uh sorry this statue of Daniel Webster or maybe when you see images of him and see something else in your mind's
020eye. But yes sir, you pointed to the compromise of 1850 and that's another um big legacy for him. He didn't actually vote on this compromise, but he was instrumental in passing it. And this included the explosive 1850 fugitive slave act, which empowered slavers as never before to be able to go capture people like the crafts crossing state lines with federal power behind them. So there had been a fugitive slave act before this. There had been actually what's known as a fugitive slave clause in the constitution itself empowering people to reclaim the labor that was owed them if the sources of labor happened to escape into another state. But this new law gave people like Robert Collins, Ellen Craft's biological sister dashslaver's husband, the power as never before, octopus powers as the scholar Ibram Kendy has
021described them. And I love that image. So this cartoon that you see here, Conquering Prejudice, kind of describes the role that Daniel Webster had in 1850, not no longer as a congressman, but as Secretary of State. So he actually comes into Boston when the crafts are here. Um, and towards the end of this climactic crisis they that they face in this very neighborhood, uh, he's responsible for helping to hunt them down. And so when Ellen Craft I'm not going to go through you'll I you can read about the details in the book but there's a huge chase that happens and the crafts are hiding in a variety of places and when they are when Ellen Craft is hiding in Brookline not far from here she awakes screaming from a nightmare and in that nightmare she
022is being chased and William is being chased by Daniel Webster who has a pistol and the crafts in his sights. I'd like to direct you to a second location near us. So, if you were to walk down the street, um, come out of the state house, the front of it, turn right, um, and then turn right again onto Joy Street, you would see the Museum of AfricanAmerican History in Boston. Has anyone been there? Oh, great. I'm glad to see. And for those of you who haven't, I highly recommend it. Apparently, you have to sign up ahead of time for a tour. But again, this is a space in which the history is palpable. Here is the site in the late 19th century, so a bit closer in date to the 1850s. Um, and it has
023these gigantic windows like we have here in the this library space. And you can just kind of feel, I mean, at least I can, uh, the echoes of Douglas and, um, and so many others, William Wells Brown, uh, William Lloyd Garrison, others speaking here, congregating here. And that's exactly what happened in the aftermath of the passage of this incredibly uh devastating fugitive slave act which put all black citizens um in peril because there was no way to fight this law. If you were if you were to have two people testify against you saying that you were a fugitive from the south south, there's nothing that you could do. You could be captured and returned or sent for the first time back to um down to the south um into bondage. So this is where uh
024William Craft and and Lewis and Harriet Hayden and so many other friends and allies gathered um after the act passed uh really hearkening back to the Declaration of Independence uh uh issuing their own Declaration of sentiments and demanding that Boston rise up and that the nation rise up and much of it did. I want to make sure that if you haven't been yet to the house or even if you have and you haven't seen this, there are incredible alleyways. This is one of the reasons why this neighborhood on Beacon Hill was supposed to be a a safe place for people like the crafts because it was described as a honeycomb. It was described as a place where you could hide and where you could elude slave catchers. If slave catchers are coming up from the
025south and they're chasing you and they don't know where they are, they don't know that these kinds of uh these kind of spaces exist, you could slip into these kinds of alleyways. So, if you if you are facing the African Meeting House or the Museum of African-American History and you turn around the corner to the right, you'll see this sort of like a zigzag space. You have to look carefully to find it, but this is what you'll see on the other end. When you come out on that other end, you were that much closer to the Lewis and Harriet Hayden home, which is an incredible site. Um, it's privately owned today. Um, it was owned then by a self-emancipated couple from Kentucky, an activist couple. They also have amazing stories, and I'll just tell one
026briefly. Uh, it's one of my favorites. So, I don't know if you've watched um the musical Hamilton, know much about uh Lafayette, uh who's played by David Diggs, uh or know much about the history of Lafayette, who went on this incredible tour in the United States. But when he went on this tour, he was like a rock star. He was a celebrity. And he was parading through towns. And it's on one of these parades that he passed by a young enslaved boy who was sitting on a fence. And this boy was Lewis Hayden. And when Lewis Hayden saw this man go by in his bar and you know everybody is there to see this man, they make eye contact for a brief moment. And you know what happens? This great man, this general, this Lafayette
027who everybody wants to see bows and in that moment something happens for this child who sees that this great man sees humanity in him and he owns this memory forever. And he says he traces his desire to seek his emancipation, to seek his freedom um in part to this moment. Here is Lewis Hayden on the left and his wife Harriet on the right. And she has a beautiful uh collection of albums at the Boston ANAM, which I also highly recommend. If you can't get there physically, and I love to see things physically, you can see it online. You can actually uh tap through the pages and it's a marvel. Her own picture is not in there, but luckily I was able to find this beautiful image of her from the Smithsonian. And the the middle
028image you see of Louisis Hayden is actually owned by this library. Um and the one on the left, the one on the left is not, but I love his sort of defiant posture. He was said to have stood in his house with kegs of gunpowder ready to light them and blow everything up match in hand uh rather than deliver up the fugitives. Oh, because we are here too. Lewis Hayden was a slate uh became a uh Massachusetts legislator in 1873. So he's also a statesman. And these two, the Haydens, are two among a whole host of heroes and community members and people who joined and stood up alongside William and Ellen Craft. And again, because I wanted to make these people palpable for myself as I was writing them, I kept pictures of them on
029my wall. And you'll see actually uh in the in the brown toned um pictures there's that picture of Harriet Hayden uh while on the far right uh above the head um of Samuel Ringold Ward you have um Betsy Dodge and to the further right the far the picture the the furthest brown picture um on the right uh second from the bottom is Simeon Dodge that this is a couple who hid the crafts in Marblehead, Massachusetts and many others. Uh, and they are also heroes on the Underground Railroad Circuit. And Simeon Dodge became also a state legislator. And I think I owe the state library credit for allowing me to reprint their picture. So, this is this brings us to my book. Um, one of the things that I really love about the physical object of
030this book is that the first thing that you open when you open you see or to greet you when you open this book are the piece the the images of many of these uh individuals. The last location I would like to point your attention to uh is one that I discovered only fairly recently. a couple months ago. I just happened to stumble upon it. But this lovely bookstore um Beacon Hill Books and Cafe and they're carrying the book here today. But when I walked into that store, I felt like I was walking into like a magical space. There are all these nooks and places where you can settle down and my own family members had to be pulled out of them because they didn't want to leave. Um but it feels like you're walking inside
031a Beatatric Potter story or something like that. Um I just love it there. I was happy to see my book there. They'll be carrying copies of my book, which the New York Times, I'm happy to report, recently recommended as a book that you should be reading now. Um, they recommend it particularly if you want dramatic history that reads like a novel, which was really my goal. So, I'm very happy to see that quote. And the book will also be out in the UK uh later this month. And this is a slightly modified cover that they have for this new book. So um I hope that this talk gives you a couple new uh ways of imagining this neighborhood uh invite you to explore the neighborhood in new ways will make you look at some um
032well-known historical figures a new um and has provided an introduction to these incredible people the crafts who I have loved writing about in my book master slave husband wife and if anyone has any questions I'd be happy to answer them. I actually have a question. Yes. >> Um, this story seems to really resonate with readers. Um, why do you think it's important to tell today this narrative in 2023? You know, I've been told that there's so many and I felt these resonances myself when I was when I was writing this book. Uh, and the analogy I often draw upon, I don't think I'm the first one to say this, but when you have a nation that's as divided as ours is now, um, and a history of trauma, it's really helpful to look back to
033see what the ant um, anticedants are um, for the struggle that we face face today. And a lot of the issues, obviously slavery is over, but a lot of the issues that the crafts are fighting for, um, the justice quests that they're on, um, remain really relevant. And just as we can walk through these streets by the maps of the 19th century and see things that are familiar, I think when we walk through the history, there's a similar thing that goes on. And because what happened is at a distance of 175 years, it may give us sort of a space, a safe space um or an example in which we can discuss uh the themes that are continuing to trouble us today. >> Thank you. >> Well, that's it for questions. Thank you so much
034for having me here. Thank you. Um, just wanted to say this is a reminder that you can go to the back table and purchase a copy of Master Slave Husband Wife. Um, I also wanted to say this kind of wraps up our season of author talks for the summer, but please join us back in September. You can follow us on social media at MATE library. And thanks again to our author and our attendees. Oh my gosh.