Born enslaved in Raleigh, North Carolina, Lunsford Lane saved money from his own trade to buy his freedom and then set about purchasing his wife and seven children. His account, with petitions and documents, shows how the laws of the state turned against a free Black man trying to keep his family together.
A brief, powerful slave narrative of 1842, essential for understanding free Black life in the antebellum South. Download the free EPUB.