Louis Hughes | |
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| Born | c. 1832 |
| Died | 1913 |
| Spouse | Matilda Hughes |
Louis Hughes (c. 1832-1913) [1] was an African-American slave born in Virginia. He is the writer of the memoir Thirty Years a Slave.
Louis Hughes | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Born | c. 1832 |
| Died | 1913 |
| Spouse | Matilda Hughes |
Louis Hughes (c. 1832-1913) [1] was an African-American slave born in Virginia. He is the writer of the memoir Thirty Years a Slave.
Hughes was born in about 1832 to a Euro-American plantation owner and an African-American slave mother in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was a slave for over thirty years, spending most of that time in Tennessee. During that time, he learned in secret how to read and write. Thirty-three years after gaining freedom at the end of the Civil War, he wrote his memoir Thirty Years a Slave, published in 1897. It is considered an essential text for understanding the experience of slavery in western Tennessee. [2]
When Hughes was six years old, he was separated from his mother and sold in a Virginia slave market. In 1844, Edward McGee, a wealthy Mississippi planter, purchased young Hughes as a Christmas gift for his wife. He stayed with the family for twenty years. While in his youth, he worked as an errand boy and later became the family's butler in 1850 when they built a new home outside Memphis. [3]
Though Hughes did not work daily in field labor, he did have bad experiences with Edward's wife, Madam McGee. [2] "Some weeks it seemed I was whipped for nothing," Hughes recalled, "just to please my mistress' fancy." [4] Hughes and his wife Matilda had twin girls while in slavery, but due to neglect of the children caused by a dispute between the Madam and Matilda, the children died, for which Hughes blamed the Madam. [3] The conflict between Matilda and the Madam occurred because Matilda wished to sell her twins to a new enslavers in hopes that they would be able to survive, but Edward and the Madam refused to allow her to do so. Matilda was also unable to produce breast milk to nourish her children due to the brutality that the Madam had consistently inflicted upon her body. [5] One day, after the Madam overheard an old slave woman singing a song of freedom, the Madam exclaimed, "Don't think you are going to be free; you darkies were made by God and ordained to wait upon us." [3]
Three of his escape attempts ended with severe beatings, the scars of which he bore for the rest of his life, he said, on his body and soul. His fifth attempt was a success, in June 1865, the same month the Confederacy surrendered in his state. [3]
Hughes settled in Milwaukee with his wife Matilda, the cook from the McGees' household who escaped with him. Together they started a successful laundry business. From his learned medical experience from McGee, during his time as a slave, he pursued a career in nursing. In 1897, his autobiography was published and became an important source documenting a slave's perspective. By 1905, he was described as a janitor. In addition to the two children who died in and as a result of slavery, they had four more children born free, three girls and one boy. [1]
Hughes died in Milwaukee 1913 and is buried at Forest Home Cemetery next to Matilda. His original house in Milwaukee on 9th Street was still standing as of 2020, but was unmarked, boarded up and "not long for this world". [1]
The slave narrative is a type of literary genre involving the (written) autobiographical accounts of enslaved Africans, particularly in the Americas. Over six thousand such narratives are estimated to exist; about 150 narratives were published as separate books or pamphlets. In the United States during the Great Depression (1930s), more than 2,300 additional oral histories on life during slavery were collected by writers sponsored and published by the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program. Most of the 26 audio-recorded interviews are held by the Library of Congress.
Solomon Northup was an American abolitionist and the primary author of the memoir Twelve Years a Slave. A free-born African American from New York, he was the son of a freed slave and a free woman of color. A farmer and a professional violinist, Northup had been a landowner in Washington County, New York. In 1841, he was offered a traveling musician's job and went to Washington, D.C. ; there he was drugged and kidnapped into slavery. He was shipped to New Orleans, purchased by a planter, and held as a slave for 12 years in the Red River region of Louisiana, mostly in Avoyelles Parish. He remained a slave until he met Samuel Bass, a Canadian working on his plantation who helped get word to New York, where state law provided aid to free New York citizens who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. His family and friends enlisted the aid of the Governor of New York, Washington Hunt, and Northup regained his freedom on January 3, 1853.
Moncure Daniel Conway was an American abolitionist minister and radical writer. At various times Methodist, Unitarian, and a Freethinker, he descended from patriotic and patrician families of Virginia and Maryland but spent most of the final four decades of his life abroad in England and France, where he wrote biographies of Edmund Randolph, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Thomas Paine and his own autobiography. He led freethinkers in London's South Place Chapel, now Conway Hall.
Harriet Jacobs was an African-American abolitionist and writer whose autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is now considered an "American classic".
The Pearl incident was the largest recorded nonviolent escape attempt by enslaved people in United States history. On April 15, 1848, seventy-seven slaves attempted to escape Washington D.C. by sailing away on a schooner called The Pearl. Their plan was to sail south on the Potomac River, then north up the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware River to the free state of New Jersey, a distance of nearly 225 miles (362 km). The attempt was organized by both abolitionist whites and free blacks, who expanded the plan to include many more enslaved people. Paul Jennings, a former slave who had served President James Madison, helped plan the escape.
John Brown, also known by his slave name, "Fed," was born into slavery on a plantation in Southampton County, Virginia. He is known for his memoir published in London, England in 1855, Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Life, Sufferings, and Escape of John Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Now in England. This slave narrative, dictated to a helper who wrote it, recounted his life and later escape from slavery in Georgia. He lived in London from 1850 to the end of his life, marrying an English woman.
John Rankin was an American Presbyterian minister, educator and abolitionist. Upon moving to Ripley, Ohio, in 1822, he became known as one of Ohio's first and most active "conductors" on the Underground Railroad. Prominent pre-Civil War abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Weld, Henry Ward Beecher, and Harriet Beecher Stowe were influenced by Rankin's writings and work in the anti-slavery movement.
Edward Coles was an American planter and politician, elected as the second Governor of Illinois. From an old Virginia family, Coles as a young man was a neighbor and associate of presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe, as well as, secretary to President James Madison from 1810 to 1815.
Eston Hemings Jefferson was born into slavery at Monticello, the youngest son of Sally Hemings, a mixed-race enslaved woman. Most historians who have considered the question believe that his father was Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States. Evidence from a 1998 DNA test showed that a descendant of Eston matched the Jefferson male line, and historical evidence also supports the conclusion that Thomas Jefferson was probably Eston's father. Many historians believe that Jefferson and Sally Hemings had six children together, four of whom survived to adulthood. Other historians disagree.
Patricia C. McKissack was a prolific African American children's writer. She was the author of over 100 books, including Dear America books A Picture of Freedom: The Diary of Clotee, a Slave Girl;Color Me Dark: The Diary of Nellie Lee Love, The Great Migration North; and Look to the Hills: The Diary of Lozette Moreau, a French Slave Girl. She also wrote a novel for The Royal Diaries series: Nzingha: Warrior Queen of Matamba. Notable standalone works include Flossie & the Fox (1986), The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural (1992), and Sojourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman? (1992). What is Given from the Heart was published posthumously in 2019.
Armistead Burwell of Dinwiddie County, Virginia was a planter and a colonel of the United States Army in the War of 1812.
Solomon Bayley was a formerly enslaved African American who is best known for his 1825 autobiography entitled A Narrative of Some Remarkable Incidents in the Life of Solomon Bayley, Formerly a Slave in the State of Delaware, North America. Published in London, it is among the early slave narratives written by enslaved people who gained freedom before the American Civil War and emancipation. Bayley was born into slavery in Delaware. After escaping and being recaptured, he bought his freedom, including his wife and children. He worked as a farmer and at a sawmill. In their later years, he and his wife emigrated in 1827 to the new colony of Liberia, where he worked as a missionary and farmer. His short book about the colony was published in Delaware in 1833.
Warner Lewis Underwood was an attorney, state legislator and U.S. Representative from Kentucky. Like his brother Joseph Rogers Underwood, he was a Unionist before the American Civil War, and during the war, he served as U.S. Consul in Glasgow, Scotland.
Freedom suits were lawsuits in the Thirteen Colonies and the United States filed by slaves against slaveholders to assert claims to freedom, often based on descent from a free maternal ancestor, or time held as a resident in a free state or territory.
Anti-literacy laws in many slave states before and during the American Civil War affected slaves, freedmen, and in some cases all people of color. Some laws arose from concerns that literate slaves could forge the documents required to escape to a free state. According to William M. Banks, "Many slaves who learned to write did indeed achieve freedom by this method. The wanted posters for runaways often mentioned whether the escapee could write." Anti-literacy laws also arose from fears of slave insurrection, particularly around the time of abolitionist David Walker's 1829 publication of Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, which openly advocated rebellion, and Nat Turner's slave rebellion of 1831.
The treatment of slaves in the United States often included sexual abuse and rape, the denial of education, and punishments like whippings. Families were often split up by the sale of one or more members, usually never to see or hear of each other again.
Fredrick Lemuel "Fred" McKissack, Sr. was an African-American writer, best known for collaboration with his wife, Patricia C. McKissack on more than 100 children's books about the history of African Americans.
Ann Randolph Meade Page was an Episcopal slavery reformer. She was raised in her birth family with slaves and her husband was among the largest slaveholders in Frederick County, Virginia. She did not believe in slavery, and while she was unable to free slaves, she focused on improving their conditions by teaching them to read and write, religion, a wide range of domestic skills and trades. After the founding of the American Colonization Society and afer the death of her husband, she emancipated enslaved people and prepared them to leave the United States for the colony of Liberia in Africa, where they and their family members would live free.
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