workingclasshistory:

On this day, 21 December 1848, escaped enslaved people Ellen and William Craft boarded a steamship in Savannah, Georgia, heading to Philadelphia where they arrived on Christmas morning. Ellen, who was light-skinned, disguised herself as a white male enslaver, wearing a top hat and cravat, with William as her slave. After the passing of the 1850 fugitive slave act, which meant that Black people who escaped slavery in the North had to be returned to the South, they had to flee to England. Here they lived for 19 years, having five children and getting involved in the abolitionist movement and struggles for women’s suffrage, before returning to the US after the civil war. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1612764212242056/?type=3