00:00:00
Phoebe Judge: It does seem to me that this
was a love story. Barbara McCaskill: Absolutely.
00:00:06
Phoebe Judge: These were two people who were
kind of, wildly in love and wanting to live
00:00:16
freely. Barbara McCaskill: Absolutely, they are partners
every step of the way, and at the center of
00:00:23
their story is the fact that they fell for
each other and had such a long relationship
00:00:27
with each other. Phoebe Judge: Let's go back to the beginning. Who were William and Ellen Craft?
00:00:33
Barbara McCaskill: William and Ellen Craft
were both born in slavery in the middle of
00:00:37
the 19th century in Georgia. Phoebe Judge: We know more about Ellen's life
than we do about William's.
00:00:42
What we do know
about William Craft is that the man who owned his family sold his parents when William was
a child.
00:00:47
And then William and his sister were mortgaged. Their owner wanted cash so he could invest
in cotton, and when that investment failed,
00:00:51
the bank just took William and his sister
and auctioned them off to the highest bidders.
00:00:56
By the time William was 16, he'd lost every
member of his family... Barbara McCaskill: ...which was very traumatic.
00:01:03
First the idea, of all of a sudden without
any warning, one's owner coming in and saying,
00:01:07
"Today is the day, I'm going to separate you,"
is traumatic enough, and then not knowing
00:01:13
what would become of his siblings, was also
traumatic. Phoebe Judge: This is University of Georgia
Professor Barbara McCaskill.
00:01:20
Barbara McCaskill: Ellen again, was born in
slavery. We know more about the circumstances of her
birth.
00:01:24
She was born in a small town called Clinton,
which is right outside of Macon, Georgia.
00:01:27
Ellen's mother was enslaved. We know the name of her mother, Mariah, and
her father was the white man who owned her.
00:01:34
Her father was her master, James P. Smith. Phoebe Judge: It didn't matter that Ellen
was the master's daughter.
00:01:39
She was still forced to work as a house servant
waiting on her father, his wife and her half
00:01:47
siblings. Her presence in the house was a daily reminder
to everyone of what James Smith had done.
00:01:55
Barbara McCaskill: It caused a great deal
of tension between her master, James Smith
00:02:00
and his wife. And one of the reasons why the wife was so
angry and so jealous, was because white visitors
00:02:06
and friends of the master and mistress would
come to the household, and they would mistake
00:02:13
Ellen for one of his wife's children. And that was a constant source of embarrassment
and shame.
00:02:20
As a result, an opportunity arose in which
the mistress finally was able to get rid of
00:02:26
Ellen once and for all. Phoebe Judge: The mistress’s solution was
to give Ellen away as a wedding present.
00:02:34
Ellen had a half-sister who was a few years
older than she was, Eliza. When Eliza married a very wealthy man in Macon,
Dr. Robert Collins, Ellen was sent over along
00:02:48
with all the other wedding gifts. She was 11 years old. Barbara McCaskill: She was basically passed
from mistress to mistress.
00:02:55
She would become officially the maidservant
of Eliza Smith Collins, and live in the Collins'
00:03:00
very posh home in downtown Macon, Georgia,
ostensibly separating Ellen from the closest
00:03:03
person that she had known for all of her life,
her mother, Mariah. Ellen never knew whether she would see her
mother again.
00:03:07
Phoebe Judge: It's also kind of horrifying
to imagine being given as a gift to your own
00:03:11
sister. Barbara McCaskill: Yes, this idea that she
could be passed from hand to hand as little
00:03:16
more than a wedding present really stung her
pride, and emphasized to her the reality that
00:03:22
every enslaved person had to face, and typically
very early in their lives. And that was that in the eyes
of the slave holding society, they were not
00:03:31
human beings. They were property, they were objects. The former slave Harriet Jacobs describes
African Americans in enslavement as merely
00:03:34
laboring machines in the eyes of their masters
and mistresses. Phoebe Judge: It was as her sister's property
in her new house in Macon that Ellen met William
00:03:42
Craft for the first time. He was trained as a carpenter and carpentry
was in demand.
00:03:46
Robert Collins often rented William to other
slave owners in a practice called hiring out.
00:03:49
Being hired out meant that William was given
a special travel pass. He could move from town to town with more
freedom and less surveillance, and he could
00:03:59
make a little bit of money for himself. Ellen and William fell in love, and although
they wanted very badly to be married by a
00:04:08
Minister, that wasn't allowed. The alternative for enslaved people was a
ritual called, jumping the broom.
00:04:12
Barbara McCaskill: Basically, what the couple
would do, would jump over a broomstick several
00:04:16
times as a way of sealing the deal on their
relationship. And there would often be an opportunity provided
by the master and mistress, free time from
00:04:24
labor, in other words, for the couple to have
a reception. So, William and Ellen Craft jumped the broom,
but this rankled them.
00:04:30
This frustrated
them. They wanted the solemnity, the sobriety of
a Christian ceremony.
00:04:34
So, one of the reasons they decide to escape
is so that they can get married again and
00:04:39
do it right. Phoebe Judge: They were going to need a very
good plan. It was against the law for them to travel
on trains or boats without their master's
00:04:50
consent. It wasn't going to be easy to cross multiple
slave holding states without a train or a
00:04:56
boat. And they knew that if they got caught, they'd
be separated from each other, maybe forever.
00:05:02
And they'd heard stories of professional slave
hunters who made a living chasing escapees
00:05:06
and returning them to their masters to be
punished, sometimes tortured to death.
00:05:09
But they also knew they were going to try. They wanted children, and they wanted their
children to be safe.
00:05:17
Barbara McCaskill: This was the major terror
that compelled them to decide to run away.
00:05:21
They wanted to have the peaceful understanding
that any children that they had in their marriage
00:05:26
would truly be free, and they would not wake
up one morning or be awoken one night by slave
00:05:31
traders who had come to take their children
away from them. Phoebe Judge: It took eight days to work out
exactly what would happen.
00:05:40
They agreed they wouldn't try to escape in
the middle of the night. William came up with something much more daring.
00:05:48
A plan to escape in broad daylight, elbow
to elbow with white slave owners and slave
00:05:53
traders. Barbara McCaskill: Remember that Ellen is
half white, and because of her biracial identity,
00:06:00
she looks like a white person. She also walked and talked and sounded like
a privileged, affluent white person because
00:06:11
she'd spent her entire life around privileged,
affluent white people, beginning with her
00:06:18
playmate, her half white sister Eliza. So, William proposed to Ellen that they use
her body as the mechanism of their escape.
00:06:30
And by that I mean, she would cut her hair,
she would deepen her voice and make her voice
00:06:40
sound husky, and she would pretend that she
was a wealthy, white, Southern plantation
00:06:42
gentleman. A wealthy, white male slave holder, and
accompanying her would be William.
00:06:46
He would pretend to be her slave. Phoebe Judge: William began to gather what
they needed for Ellen's disguise.
00:06:53
He knew better than to try to buy more than
one item at any given store, so he went all
00:07:01
over town at odd times buying bits and pieces
of what they needed. Ellen worked on sewing the pants she'd wear.
00:07:08
They were young and in love and about to hide
in plain sight. For the last step, William cut off his wife's
hair, short and square across the back of
00:07:20
her head. And the next morning they were on their way. I'm Phoebe Judge, this is Criminal.
00:07:26
Barbara McCaskill: She was very nervous about
her ability to pass as a man. She would have to learn very quickly how to
walk differently, how to use space differently.
00:07:42
She worried about the fact that she didn't
have facial hair during an era when most adult
00:07:48
men had beards, mustaches. Not unlike the trend today. How was she going to do that?
00:07:54
They could try to put together some false
hair, but she worried that it would look so
00:08:01
fake. So they articulated their disguise of Ellen
even further by making the decision that Ellen
00:08:08
would pretend to be very ill, and that would
give her the excuse to wrap her face in bandages
as if she had bad swelling and a bad toothache.
00:08:20
And also, it would give her the excuse not
to talk a lot, not to move her jaws a lot.
00:08:27
They also knew the expectation would be by
other whites around her that she could read
00:08:31
and write, and they knew that she might be
called upon to write her name when she signed
00:08:38
for tickets for trains and steam ships. So, she put her arm in a sling as if it were
broken.
00:08:44
Phoebe Judge: Even with one arm broken and
in a sling, she might still be asked to sign
00:08:51
something with her other hand, so she kept
those fingers bent like she had severe arthritis,
00:08:55
too painful to hold a pen. They pretended she was almost deaf and couldn't
understand what people might ask her.
00:09:02
And to deal with the issue of reading, she
wore a pair of green tinted glasses. These were supposed to signal that she couldn't
really see.
00:09:09
Barbara McCaskill: So she and William concocted
all kinds of problems. They would pretend that he, in other words
Ellen, was going specifically to Philadelphia
00:09:15
in order to have expert medical advice. In the middle of the 19th century, Philadelphia
was a major center of medical innovation and
00:09:21
research. People would not be perplexed or suspicious
if she said she was going to Philadelphia
00:09:27
for medical assistance. Also, fortuitously for William and Ellen,
Philadelphia was in a free state.
00:09:32
They knew that as enslaved persons, if they
could make it to Philadelphia they would be
00:09:38
relatively free. Phoebe Judge: They wanted to leave close to
Christmas hoping everyone would be distracted,
00:09:43
and every place would be crowded. Very early in the morning on December 21,
1848, they set off for the train station.
00:09:50
William stowed her luggage and went to his
train car near the engine, while Ellen took
00:09:56
her seat in one of the fanciest cars on the
train. She was alone, wearing a suit and tie plus
a vest.
00:10:06
She also wore a beaver hat. Barbara McCaskill: What they looked like are
basically shorter versions of top hats.
00:10:13
And they
gave the gentleman wearing them an air of distinction and were meant to be signals of
respectability, and signals of wealth.
00:10:21
Phoebe Judge: I mean, it's so unreal to think
of William and Ellen standing there you know,
00:10:27
Ellen posing as a nearly deaf, badly injured,
white wealthy man in a beaver hat, and just
00:10:33
looking at each other and just saying, "All
right, here we go." Barbara McCaskill: She was terrified and so
was William, and Ellen immediately recognized
00:10:41
from the get go, she recognizes in this first
leg, a neighbor of her master and mistress
00:10:47
in Macon. She kept her calm outwardly but inside she
was quaking because this was the first real
00:10:55
test of her disguise. They exchanged greetings, they don't have
a detailed conversation, and that is due in
00:11:01
large part because of the effectiveness of
Ellen's strategy. Phoebe Judge: They got off the train in Savannah
and boarded an overnight steamboat to Charleston.
00:11:12
As soon as they got on the boat, Ellen panicked
and went to her cabin to go to bed.
00:11:23
William tried to play up her sickness making
sure others saw him delivering her medicine
00:11:29
and bandages. They were able to spend some time alone together
that night, but then William had to leave
00:11:42
her cabin, and there was nowhere for him to
go. So, he walked around the boat most of the
night.
00:11:49
In the morning in the dining room, Ellen was
criticized by a young soldier. He said she was spoiling her slave by using
the words please and thank you.
00:11:59
Her disguise was working. When the boat docked in Charleston, they went
looking for a hotel.
00:12:06
Barbara McCaskill: They pick out one of the
poshest hotels in Charleston. This is the favourite hotel of John C. Calhoun
who was one of the most notorious defenders
00:12:14
of slavery of their day. So, they were literally going into the lion's
den. If there's ever a place where they might be
discovered, it is this hotel, and Ellen is
00:12:21
particularly very nervous about staying in
her room alone. Because remember, it is absolutely not appropriate
for her manservant to be in her room.
00:12:32
He can lay outside her room. He can put a cot on the floor outside her
room and that is indeed what he does.
00:12:41
But they can't confer very frequently in other
words. They can't touch bases frequently, they can't
warn each other on a frequent level about
00:12:50
people that are giving them suspicious glances. They both have to rely in a very independent
way on their own abilities to think on their
00:13:00
feet, on their own wit, while at the same
time to the extent that they can, try to protect
00:13:06
each other. Phoebe Judge: They planned to go directly
from Charleston to Philadelphia, but when
00:13:10
they got to Charleston they realized that
that boat didn't operate in the winter.
00:13:14
They needed to reroute. Not an easy task when you can't read, and
when Ellen was doing everything she could
00:13:22
not to talk. She managed to buy a boat ticket from Charleston
to Wilmington, North Carolina, and the ticket
00:13:30
clerk asked her to pay a $1 tax on her servant. She paid the dollar and then the clerk told
her to sign the registration log.
00:13:42
She held up her arthritic hand. Barbara McCaskill: The clerk is very suspicious
and kind of nasty at- something doesn't feel
00:13:50
right, it seems, to that particular gentleman
about Ellen. He insists that she sign her name.
00:13:55
Charleston was on particular alert for African
Americans trying to run away by boat.
00:14:02
And there
was something about Ellen that doesn't ring true to him. What happens is that momentarily, Ellen and
William are dumbfounded.
00:14:08
William, of course, doesn't dare to speak. It is the protocol that slaves don't speak
unless spoken to.
00:14:16
So, to amplify the tension William can't even
defend Ellen. She's on her own, even though he's standing
there next to her.
00:14:22
So, she's in a momentary loss for words because
her sense of affluence, her sense of wealth,
00:14:29
her old age, her seniority, her infirmity,
all of these mean nothing to the gentleman
00:14:34
who is standing between her and William's
next step toward freedom. And there are two gentlemen who are in line
behind them.
00:14:40
One who had met Ellen on a prior leg of the
journey, and another young soldier, and they
00:14:48
both step up to defend the honor of what they
perceive to be is another Southern gentleman.
00:14:57
And in fact, one of these men volunteers to
sign his name for Ellen if need be. So it's just by good fortune that she and
William are able to board the steamship at
00:15:15
Charleston port, they just luck out. Phoebe Judge: They reached Wilmington and
took a train to Richmond, where Ellen was
00:15:24
joined in the car by a middle-aged white man
and his two young daughters. The man would not stop talking to her, and
then his daughters started talking to her.
00:15:34
When Ellen tried to go to sleep, the girls
offered to make her a pillow with their shawls,
00:15:41
and still kept trying to have a conversation. Barbara McCaskill: And it's like the equivalent
today of being on an airplane and all you
00:15:51
wanna do is sleep, and the person next to
you just keeps talking, and talking, and talking,
00:15:59
and talking. Phoebe Judge: Nightmare. Barbara McCaskill: Yes, it was a nightmare,
Phoebe Judge: This is like a complete nightmare.
00:16:09
Barbara McCaskill: It was a nightmare. And Ellen slowly realizes, it slowly begins
to dawn on Ellen that these two young ladies
00:16:19
are flirting with her. They see her, in spite of her infirmity, they're
looking at the signals of wealth that her
00:16:28
clothing give off, and they see a marriage
prospect. And it becomes agonizingly clear to Ellen,
but she begs off again, calling attention
00:16:36
to how badly she's feeling and how ill she
is, and how she really must get this treatment,
00:16:43
and although they are disappointed, they leave
the train. Phoebe Judge: The father gave Ellen a recipe
for something he said would help her arthritic
00:16:48
joints. But she was so scared of holding the piece
of paper upside down that she didn't even
00:16:53
look at it. She thanked him and immediately put it in
her pocket. Barbara McCaskill: Why should we be surprised
that both she and William had such talent
00:17:01
masquerading, disguising, fooling people. If we think about how, on a daily basis as
they were growing up, William and Ellen Craft
00:17:07
learned very quickly to avoid punishment and
reprisal to mask their true feelings, to pretend
00:17:12
they were happy when they may have felt sad,
to pretend they were delighted when they might
00:17:17
have felt angry. All of that practice served them when they
were escaping from the South.
00:17:24
In other words, Ellen and William had a well
of talent to dig from as they were pretending
00:17:29
to be people who they were not. Phoebe Judge: And then on Christmas day, four
days after they left Georgia, they arrive
00:17:37
safely in Philadelphia. They went directly to an abolitionist safe
house where they were greeted as two men.
00:17:43
Barbara McCaskill: They think, the abolitionists
think that Ellen is really a black man disguised
00:17:47
as a white man. A light-skinned, white looking black man disguised
as a white man.
00:17:51
Ellen excuses herself, she goes into another
room, she changes clothes and she comes out
00:17:54
in 19th century feminine attire, wearing a
long dress, wearing a scarf on her head, attired
00:17:57
like a woman and she astonishes the abolitionists. So, from that day forward, their story becomes
a sensation.
00:18:02
The American anti-slavery and commercial press
pick up that story like lightning and tell
00:18:06
it far and wide. And William and Ellen Craft very quickly,
become the darlings of the American and British
00:18:12
anti-slavery community. Why? Not only did they effect this daring escape,
but they are young, they are good looking—that
00:18:19
always matters in terms of celebrity culture. They're well mannered, they're composed, they're
eager to learn.
00:18:24
They're eager to read, eager to write and
eager to give themselves fully to the anti-slavery
00:18:30
cause. Phoebe Judge: Philadelphia abolitionists insisted
that they would be safer and better supported
00:18:34
if they went to Boston, and so they did. William worked as a carpenter and cabinet
maker.
00:18:42
Ellen worked as a seamstress. They were invited to give speeches about their
escape and earned money that way too.
00:18:46
Things were good for about two years until
1850, when Congress passed the Fugitive Slave
00:18:48
Act. It required authorities in free states to
participate in the capture and return of runaway
00:18:52
slaves. Anyone caught providing food, shelter, or
help to fugitives was subject to a $1,000
00:18:57
fine and six months in jail. William and Ellen's master, Robert Collins,
got warrants for their arrest and enlisted
00:19:02
the help of the US Marshals. Barbara McCaskill: The minute that William
and Ellen Craft step onto the free soil of
00:19:10
Philadelphia, they became criminalized in
the eyes of Robert Collins who owned them
00:19:15
and other Southern slaveholders. They were in essence stealing themselves from
their owners.
00:19:19
They didn't own themselves, so they could
not make the decision to free themselves.
00:19:22
They had literally stolen themselves away,
and an owner like Dr. Collins would see them
00:19:26
as eminently retrievable. In other words, your freedom was freedom so
long as you didn't get caught.
00:19:31
Phoebe Judge: Boston was a major center of
the abolitionist movement. There was a huge network of people eager to
protect the Crafts, and the two bounty hunters
00:19:40
who arrived in Boston to try to capture them
— their names were Willis Hughes and John
00:19:49
Knight — had no idea what they were walking
into. Barbara McCaskill: Bostonians start a harassment
campaign.
00:19:55
Every time these two men, Hughes and Knight
appear from their hotel on the streets, Bostonians
00:20:00
pelt them with raw vegetables. Their favorite is rotten eggs. The police of the city of Boston harass the
bounty hunters by stopping their carriage
00:20:10
frequently, their horse-drawn carriage, and
fining them, and sometimes jailing them for driving too fast.
00:20:16
In effect, everyone tries in all kinds of
ways, large and small, to make the lives of
00:20:26
these two gentlemen as miserable as possible. They give them phony directions, they call
them names, they serve them bad food in restaurants.
00:20:36
They activate a campaign to literally drive
these men out of the city of Boston, and provide
00:20:51
as much disinformation as they can about the whereabouts of William and Ellen
Craft.
00:21:21
Phoebe Judge: The bounty hunters gave up after
five days and just went home. Because of the Fugitive Slave Act, there was
nowhere in the whole country the Crafts would
00:21:39
be safe. They were too high profile and their owner
was too rich and powerful. He'd already written directly to the president,
Millard Fillmore, asking for assistance tracking
00:22:01
them down. Ellen and William needed to leave the country,
but first, they still wanted a real wedding
00:22:20
with a minister. In November of 1850, the abolitionist and
Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker, performed
00:22:30
the ceremony. That same year, Theodore Parker gave a speech
at an anti-slavery meeting that included the
00:22:46
phrase, "a democracy of all the people, by
all the people, for all the people." Years later, Lincoln adapted that phrase for
the Gettysburg Address.
00:23:14
After their second wedding, Ellen and William
headed north to Canada and boarded a ship
00:23:36
to Liverpool. Barbara McCaskill: They end up spending 19
years in England, and over those years they
00:23:41
have five children, four sons and a daughter. And they also try from thousands of miles
away with an ocean between them, to reassemble
00:23:53
their own families that they had been divided
from. They use letters, they find lawyers, they
even appeal to union soldiers who are traveling
00:24:06
throughout the south in the war, to help them
find their family members. And miraculously, Ellen is reunited on British
soil with her mother, Mariah.
00:24:20
Mariah is still living outside of Macon, Georgia
they find out, and they are able to purchase
00:24:29
her through the help of abolitionist friends
and bring her to England. Phoebe Judge: Eventually William and Ellen,
and Ellen's mother and
00:25:25
their children, move back to the United States. They moved back to the South. They bought a plantation outside of Savannah,
and in 1873 they founded the Woodville Cooperative
00:26:08
Farm School, where Ellen, alongside three
of her children, taught reading and writing to
men and women released from slavery.
00:26:40
Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer, Nadia
Wilson and me. Audio mix by Rob Byers.
00:26:45
Alice Wilder is our intern. Julienne Alexander makes original illustrations
for each episode of Criminal.
00:27:23
You can see them at thisiscriminal.com, where
we've got archival portraits of the Crafts, including Ellen in her disguise.
00:28:02
The Crafts wrote a book about their escape. It's called Running A Thousand Miles For Freedom.
00:28:19
That's how we got so many details about how
they planned it and pulled it off. We've got a link to the book.
00:29:03
You can read the whole thing online. You can also learn more about Professor Barbara
McCaskill's book, Love, Liberation And Escaping
00:29:19
Slavery, William And Ellen Craft In Cultural
Memory. That's all at thisiscriminal.com.
00:30:51
If you
like our work, please review the show on iTunes. It's an important way to help us grow.
00:32:02
Criminal is
recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX,
a collection of the best podcasts around.
00:32:33
I’m Phoebe Judge, this is Criminal. Jingle: Radiotopia, from PRX.