“It is true, our condition as slaves was not by any means the worst; but the thought that we couldn’t call the bones and sinews that God gave us our own haunted us for years.”

William and Ellen Craft had lived with that demoralizing detachment as a married enslaved couple for 2 years, but their dread was only growing worse.

Ellen wanted children but refused because she herself had been torn from her family on her mistress’s whim as a child. Her light skin led strangers to mistake her for a member of her master’s family (and she was: he was her father), and it so infuriated the owner’s wife that when Ellen was 11, she was simply given away. Some of the Crafts’ friends had even suffered worse: each member of their family was separated from each other and sexually abused by their owners until they either escaped or bought each others freedom. Even if all they had was each other, William & Ellen had too much to lose.

But their escape in particular was more complicated by the fact that William and Ellen had two different owners. If they were going to flee Georgia, they’d have to figure out a way to do it together and be discreet about it, a tough task considering that their near opposite skin tones made them a conspicuous pair. Because they were both trusted in their households, they were each granted passes to visit family nearby. So with one problem down and a head start on their owners, they decided to hide in plain sight.

Whomever came looking for them would be keeping a watchful eye for a black man and white-passing woman, but William and Ellen both knew firsthand that no one batted an eye over a master accompanied by his or her slave. So they devised an elaborate scheme that both of them almost didn’t have the nerve to go through with. Ellen’s hair was cut short in the style of rich white plantation owners, and her jaw and neck were wrapped in gauze to appear as though she had some sort of affliction, when it was really to hide her soft, slender face and lack of facial hair from anyone who might look too closely. They even put her arm in a cast so as to deter anyone who might ask her to write or sign anything, as she’d never be taught to read or write. And on December 21, 1848, they made their daring escape by train, boat and on foot.

It was 6 full days before Ellen’s heart stopped pounding out of her chest.

Just a day into the trip, who was seated on the train next to them but a friend of Ellen’s master, a man who knew her well. He spent the whole ride shouting to make conversation with her. She spent it pretending she was deaf.

In South Carolina, their next passage was denied by a steward insisting on William’s ownership papers. Abolitionists had been kidnapping slaves from their rightful southern owners and granting them freedom in northern states, and this particular steward was serious about his job, refusing to sell them tickets until Ellen produced papers. Just then, the captain from their previous trip happened by & vouched for the couple, never realizing he’d been duped himself.

In Baltimore, the last stop to freedom, this time officials pulled them from the ship, demanding William’s documentation. Ellen pulled out every trick she knew, stalling, huffing and puffing until finally, the ship began to depart. Fooled by the cast and face wraps still hiding Ellen’s true identity, the official pitied a sickly man and allowed him (her) to carry on with the trip.

The disguise was so good that even William found himself thwarting would be rescuers who advised him on how to abandon his disabled “master” for freedom in the north.

The couple arrived in Philadelphia on December 26, where Ellen collapsed into tears under the weight of the nearly weeklong ruse and relief from the fear of what being discovered would have meant for them.

They were taught to read, write, and found a prosperity in Philadelphia that neither of them had experienced before. But their great escape wasn’t over yet.

The Fugitive Slave Act allowed masters to recover their escaped property by any means necessary and with the help of federal authorities, which is exactly what William and Ellen’s owners did.

So in 1850, the pair fled again. This time to England, where rather than life out their days quietly as free people, they joined others who’d escaped slavery to successfully convince Parliament not to ally with Confederate forces in the Civil War. For the next 20 years, William and Ellen Clark made a name for themselves as prominent abolitionists, raised a family, and financed philanthropic causes in Africa.

But even in the worst of circumstances, there’s no place like home, so once slavery was finally abolished in the United States, the Clarks returned to Georgia in 1868, using the education they’d received in England to open a school for newly freed black students, putting their considerable finances toward purchasing a plantation of their own, and living the rest of their lives fighting for even greater black freedoms, together.

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