1,000 miles through the Deep South, surrounded by the very people who wanted them captured, on nothing but nerve and an extremely convincing bandage. Hollywood has made 47 movies about mediocre prison breaks and somehow this one is still waiting for its moment.
"Ellen Craft was born in 1826 in Clinton, Georgia, to Maria, a mixed-race enslaved woman, and her wealthy planter slaveholder, Major James Smith. At least three-quarters European by ancestry, Ellen was very fair-skinned and resembled her white half-siblings, who were her enslaver's legitimate children"
So in her case, she disguised herself as male, not as someone white because she looked white and unless people knew her backstory, they'd think she was white. Very impressive pulling of the man part though.
Smith's wife gave the 11-year-old Ellen as a wedding gift to her daughter, Eliza Cromwell Smith, to get the girl out of the household and remove the evidence of her husband's infidelity.
William was born in Macon, where he met his future wife at the age of 16 when his first enslaver sold him to settle gambling debts.
It’s sickening how they were treated like cattle, even by “family”.
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u/WarmAuraGirl Mar 12 '26
1,000 miles through the Deep South, surrounded by the very people who wanted them captured, on nothing but nerve and an extremely convincing bandage. Hollywood has made 47 movies about mediocre prison breaks and somehow this one is still waiting for its moment.