Running for Freedom

Running for Freedom explores the lives of enslaved men, women, and children who fled the farms and plantations in North Carolina between 1775 and 1840. It is a story of resilience, tenacity, and fearlessness by enslaved men and women who sought to separate themselves from the environs of their brutal enslavement. It chronicles their quest to find measures of physical and psychological freedom; including efforts to reconnect with family members from whom they had been separated, to find freedom in the North and West, and to find relief through petite marronage. This study is based on thousands of advertisements for enslaved runaways placed in North Carolina newspapers. In his 1994 publication, Stealing a Little Freedom: Advertisements for Slave Runaways in North Carolina, 1791-1840, Freddie L. Parker wrote: "These invaluable notices written by slaveowners who sought only the retrieval of their human property represent "unconscious evidence," allowing us to peer into their world and into the world of the slaves. The notices in many ways "resurrect" both slaves and slaveowners, and provide clues that help us understand the world in which they lived. Subscribers--in many cases--were mouth pieces for their escaped slaves. We are able to gauge slave deportment, countenance, speech impediments, speech fluency and disfluencies, and other personality traits." Running for Freedom indeed resurrects nameless, faceless human beings, and also shows that the farms and plantations in North Carolina were not chapels of ease, nurseries, or schools, rather, prisons from which enslaved men, women, and children sought constantly to escape.