Henry "Box" Brown mailed himself to freedom / Walter Rodney born - March 23

On this day in 1849, an enslaved man named Henry Brown packed himself up in a box and was shipped to Pennsylvania, a free state. / On this day in 1942, historian and activist Walter Rodney was born.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone, it's Eves checking in here to let you
know that you're going to be hearing two different events
in history in this episode. They're both good, if I
do say so myself. On with the show. Greetings everyone,
Welcome to this day in History class, where we learn
a smidgen of history every day. The day was March

(00:26):
eighteen forty nine. An enslaved man named Henry Brown packed
himself up in a box and with the help of friends,
mailed himself from slavery in Virginia to freedom in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Henry was born in eighteen fifteen or eighteen sixteen at
the Hermitage Plantation in Louisa County, Virginia, and John Barrett

(00:50):
was his owner. Henry's life was markedly different from that
of many other people who were enslaved at the time.
He knew and grew up with parents and his four
sisters and three brothers. He was not whipped. As Henry
learned more about slavery on other plantations, he discovered how

(01:10):
terrible the conditions on plantations could be. But it wasn't
long before Henry's life would be changed forever by one
of the cruel practices endemic to the institution of slavery
family separation. When Henry was a teenager, John Barrett died
and gave Henry to his son William. William took Henry

(01:32):
to Richmond to work in a tobacco factory, separating Henry
from his family. William promised Henry good treatment in a
small sum of money if he behaved well and worked hard.
Years later, Henry married an enslaved woman named Nancy, who
was owned by a banker named Mr. Lee. But Henry

(01:54):
was once again torn apart from a loved one when
Nancy was sold to Joseph cole Quit, then to a
man named Samuel Catrell. Cotrell basically extorted Henry, telling Henry
that he could stay with his wife and kids if
he paid him fifty dollars a year. Henry did so,

(02:15):
and the family lived together for years in a rental home,
attending the first African Baptist church. But in August, twelve
years into the marriage, Cotrell sold Nancy and the three
Brown children. At the time, Nancy was pregnant. On the
day Nancy had to leave for North Carolina, Henry held

(02:38):
Nancy's hand for four miles before he said his final goodbye.
Henry was once again ripped away from his family. What
happened to Nancy and their children is unknown. It was
at this point when Henry began to really resent the
lack of morality and goodness and supposedly Chris slave owners,

(03:01):
and he longed to escape slavery. He later wrote the following.
One day, while I was at work and my thoughts
were eagerly feasting upon the idea of freedom, I felt
my soul called out to Heaven to breathe a prayer
to Almighty God. I prayed fervently that he who seeth
in secret and knew the inmost desires of my heart,

(03:24):
would lend me his aid in bursting my fetters asunder
and then restoring me to the possession of those rights
of which men had robbed me. When the idea suddenly
flashed across my mind of shutting myself up in a
box and getting myself conveyed as dry goods to a
free state, so Henry turned to James Caesar Anthony Smith,

(03:46):
a free black man and fellow member of the First
African Baptist Church Choir, for help. James Smith then reached
out to Samuel Alexander Smith, a white shoemaker, gambler and
slave owner to set up the escape. After they decided
that Henry would be shipped in a box by rail
to Philadelphia, Samuel Smith got in touch with James Miller McKim,

(04:10):
a leader of the Pennsylvania Anti Slavery Society who was
involved in the underground railroad. Henry port sulfuric acid on
one of his fingers that was already infected to get
off work, and on March Henry climbed into a wooden
box marked as dry goods that was three ft one

(04:30):
inch long, two ft wide, and two and a half
feet high. Henry was around five ft and ten inches
and two hundred pounds, so it was a tight fit.
He had a little water and some biscuits for the ride,
and he had cut holes in the box for air.
Samuel and James nailed him into the box, and Samuel

(04:51):
shipped it to Philadelphia through the Adams Express Company. The
trip took a grueling twenty seven hours, and along the
way Henry was turned upside down and thought he might die,
but he made it to the headquarters of the Philadelphia
Anti Slavery Society alive the next day. Henry later wrote,

(05:12):
I had risen as if it were from the dead.
Months later, Samuel and James were arrested for trying to
ship another person to freedom. Samuel was sentenced to six
and a half years in prison, but James was released.
Henry Box Brown went on tours telling his story and

(05:33):
wrote a book with the abolitionist Charles Stearns called Narrative
of Henry Box Brown. Just before the Fugitive Slave Act
of eighteen fifty past, which would require people who escaped
slavery and lived in free states to be returned to
their owners, Henry was motivated to leave the country because
of a racist assault he had endured. Henry lived in

(05:55):
England for twenty five years, performing acts about his escape
able and eventually magic and science. He returned to the
US in eighteen seventy five with his second wife and
daughter and stayed in the entertainment business. Years later, he
moved to Canada and likely died there in eighteen nine.

(06:18):
People who were enslaved used many different methods of escape,
some successful and some not, but Henry's mail escape lives
on as a testament to the ingenuity and determination many
people had to employ to find a way to freedom.
I'm Eves, Jeff Coote, and hopefully you know a little

(06:38):
more about history today than you did yesterday. If you
want to know more about Henry's life, listen to the
episode of Stuffy missed in history class called The Life
and Magic of Henry Box Brown. And I'd like to
add that some sources claim he was shipped on March
twenty nine and arrived in Philadelphia on March thirty, including

(07:00):
the book that Brown wrote himself called Narrative of the
Life of Henry Box Brown. But a letter James Miller
McKim wrote on March puts the shipping day at March
and other documents back that date up as well. And
during his lifetime, Henry did have some critics. James Smith
criticized him for taking an English wife instead of trying

(07:23):
to find and purchase Nancy. Frederick Douglas also thought that
Brown ruined the chance for other enslaved people to escape
via shipping, since Brown had publicized his method. Thanks again
for listening, and we'll see you here again tomorrow. Hey everyone,

(07:50):
it's Eves again speaking to you from the comfort of
my home. Welcome to another episode of this day and
History class. The day was March nineteen forty two, Guyanese
historian and activist Walter Rottney was born. He's remembered for

(08:15):
his scholarship and activism concerning the working class and black
people around the world. Rottney was born to Edward and
Pauline Rottney in Georgetown, British Guyana or present day Guyana,
British Guyana was a colony that was part of the
British West Indies. After World War Two, there were increasing
demands for political independence in Guyana. The People's Progressive Party,

(08:38):
a left wing political party formed in the early nineteen
fifties in the colony. Rottney's perspectives developed in the midst
of this rising anti colonial sentiment. During that decade, Rottney
distributed People's Progressive Party manifestos. He began attending Queen's College,
a high school in Guyana. There, he edited the school's

(08:59):
newspaper and participated in the debate society. He graduated in
nineteen sixty and won a scholarship to the University College
of the West Indies. He graduated with a degree in
history in nineteen sixty three. He went on to attend
the University of London, where he got a doctorate in
African history. His thesis was called a History of the

(09:20):
Upper Guinea Coast fifty to eighteen hundred in England, Rottney
continued to recognize how scholarship divorced history from politics. Rottney
took a job as a lecturer in Tanzania, but he
left to teach at the University of the West Indies
in Jamaica. There he taught African history, highlighting the importance

(09:42):
of Africa and Caribbean history and the impact of historical
resistance against slavery and colonialism. He advocated for the working
class and criticized the government's policies. He gave lectures to
marginalized groups in Jamaica and became a key figure in
the Black power movement. After he went to the Black
Writers Conference in Montreal in nineteen sixty eight, Rodney was

(10:06):
declared prasada non grata by the Jamaican government and banned
from returning to the country. People protested his banning, but
he continued to speak out on the repression of darker Jamaicans.
He taught in Tanzania for a few years, publishing his
best known work, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, but in nineteen

(10:26):
seventy four, he returned to Guyana, which had gained independence
in nineteen sixty six, to take a position as a
professor of history at the University of Guyana. Though his
appointment to the university was revoked, he stayed in Guyana
and he became a leader of the Working People's Alliance,
a political group formed in the nineteen seventies in opposition

(10:47):
to the regime of Prime Minister Forbes Burnham. Rodney gave
lectures in Jamaica, Europe, and the US, and he continued
his vocal resistance to Burnham as the government proceeded to
sponsor police raid and beatings. In July of nineteen seventy nine,
he and seven other people were arrested after two government
offices were burned down. He faced charges of arson but

(11:11):
was acquitted. Though he and his peers faced persecution, he
maintained his criticism of the government and the constitution. But
on June eighty Rottney died in a bomb explosion. The
bomb was allegedly given to him by someone in the
Guyana Defense Force. It suspected that the assassination was orchestrated

(11:34):
by Burnham. Rottney was survived by his wife and three children.
Some of his works were published posthumously. I'm Eve Jeffcote
and hopefully you know a little more about history today
than you did yesterday. And if you want to leave
us a message on social media, you can do so
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(11:56):
C Podcast and if you prefer to send us an email,
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dot com. Thanks again for listening to the show and
we'll see you tomorrow. For more podcasts from I Heeart Radio,

(12:17):
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