Life and Sufferings of Leonard Black : A Fugitive from Slavery
Leonard Black (1828-1888) was born in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and was forcefully separated from his family at the age of six. He escaped from Maryland to Boston after twenty years of enslavement. In 1847, he wrote The Life and Sufferings of Leonard Black: A Fugitive From Slavery. His narrative is an account of his spirituality, in which Black contends that his faith compelled him to escape, and includes a passionate denunciation of slavery.
Black went on to preach as a Baptist minister in Boston, Providence, and Nantucket. In 1873, Black eventually settled as the minister of the First Baptist Church in Petersburg, Virginia, where he doubled the church’s membership.
In keeping with his desire to end slavery, he served in the 25th New York Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. Although Black’s name is not as well-recognized as Frederick Douglass, his story remains an essential part of abolition literature. When he died in 1883, more than 5,000 people attended his funeral.
Black speaks viscerally of the horrors of slavery: "I will now say something of slavery. I shall say nothing but what I know to be true. Slavery is a cruel system. The effects of it are scattered abroad throughout the land. It is the reigning evil of the country; yea, the mother of all evil. Why is it the mother of all evil? I answer in the language of Holy Writ, which saith, "Do unto all men as you would have them do unto you." It is not done. Again: "Love thy neighbor as thyself. This is the law and the prophets." It is not done. Reader,--where is the slaveholder who would wish his slaves to do to him as he does to them? There are none. Hence, then, the enormity of the evil."