William_Wells_Brown

William Wells Brown William Wells Brown was born in Kentucky, 1814, to a slave mother and a slaveholder. In January 1834, Brown escaped to freedom becoming a fugitive slave in Canada. William W. Brown an antislavery lecturer, novelist, playwright, and author was one of the most prominent and prolific African American in the mid-nineteenth century. After seizing his freedom, Brown (who received his middle and last name from an Ohio Quaker who helped him get to Canada) worked for nine years as a steamboat man on Lake Erie and a conductor for the Underground Railroad in Buffalo, New York. In 1843, the fugitive slave became a lecturing agent for the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society. Moving to Boston in 1847, he wrote the first, and still the most famous, version of his autobiography, Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave. Written by Himself, which went through four American and five British editions before 1850, earning its author international fame. Brown’s abolitionist career was marked by a turning point in the summer of 1843 when Buffalo hosted a national antislavery convention and the National Convention of Colored Citizens. Brown’s expanded service to the antislavery community brought an invitation to lecture before the American Anti- brown, slavery, slave, narrative, american, william, clotel, freedom, brown's, against, states, novel, life, fugitive, versions, story, published, must, master, man, later, first, daughter, brown’s, appeared, america, writing, writes, wells, version, text, stands, southern, society, slave's, sense