William Wells Brown (November 6, 1814 – November 6, 1884) was an American abolitionist, novelist, playwright, and historian. Born into slavery near Mount Sterling, Kentucky, Brown escaped to Ohio in 1834 at the age of 19. He settled in Boston, Massachusetts, where he worked for abolitionist causes and became a prolific writer. While working for abolition, Brown also supported causes including: temperance, women's suffrage, pacifism, prison reform, and an anti-tobacco movement. He was a member of Prince Hall Freemasonry. His novel Clotel (1853), considered the first novel written by an African American, was published in London, England, where he resided at the time. It was later published in the United States.
Brown was a pioneer in several different literary genres, including travel writing, fiction, and drama. In 1858 he became the first published African-American playwright, and often read from this work on the lecture circuit. Following the Civil War, in 1867 he published what is considered the first history of African Americans in the Revolutionary War. He was among the first writers inducted to the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame, established in 2013. A public school was named for him in Lexington, Kentucky.
Brown was lecturing in England when the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law was passed in the US. As its provisions increased the risk of his capture and re-enslavement, even in northern states, he stayed overseas for several years. He traveled throughout Europe. After his freedom was purchased in 1854 by a British couple, he and his two daughters returned to the US, where he rejoined the abolitionist lecture circuit in the North. A contemporary of Frederick Douglass, Brown was overshadowed by the charismatic orator and the two feuded publicly.The Works of William Wells Brown: Using His 'Strong, Manly Voice, Eds. Paula Garrett and Hollis Robbins, Oxford University Press, 2006, xvii-xxxvi.
Life in slavery William was born into slavery in 1814 (or March 15, 1815) near Lexington, Kentucky, where his mother Elizabeth was enslaved by Dr. John Young. She had seven children, each by different fathers: William, Solomon, Leander, Benjamin, Joseph, Milford, and Elizabeth.
William was of mixed race; his father was George W. Higgins, a white planter and cousin of his enslaver, Dr. Young. Higgins formally acknowledged William as his son and made Young promise not to sell him.T. N. R. Rogers, "Introduction", William Wells Brown, Clotel or The President's Daughter. Mineola/New York: Dover Publications Inc., 2004. But Young did sell the boy and his mother. In the end, William was sold several times before he was twenty years old.
His brother Joseph has been identified by researchers Ron L. Jackson Jr. and Lee Spencer White as Joe, the slave of Alamo commander William B. Travis. Joe was one of the few survivors of the battle.Ron L. Jackson Jr. and Lee Spencer White, Joe: The Slave Who Became an Alamo Legend. University of Oklahoma Press, 2015.
William spent the majority of his youth in St. Louis. His masters hired him out to work on steamboats on the Missouri River, then a major thoroughfare for steamships and the slave trade. His work allowed him to see many new places. In 1833, he and his mother escaped together across the Mississippi River, but they were captured in Illinois. In 1834, Brown made a second escape attempt, successfully slipping away from a steamboat when it docked in Cincinnati, Ohio, a free state.
In freedom, he took the names of Wells Brown, a Quaker friend who helped him after his escape by providing food, clothes and some money. He learned to read and write, and eagerly sought more education, reading extensively to make up for what he had been deprived. Around this time he was hired by Elijah Parish Lovejoy and worked with the famed abolitionist in his printing office.
Marriage and family During his first year of freedom in 1834, Brown at age 20 married Elizabeth Schooner. They had two daughters who survived to adulthood: Clarissa and Josephine. William and Elizabeth later became estranged. In 1851, Elizabeth died in the United States.
Brown had been in England since 1849 with his daughters, lecturing on the abolitionist circuit. After his freedom was purchased in 1854 by a British couple, Brown returned with his daughters to the US, settling in Boston. On April 12, 1860, the 46-year-old Brown married again, to 25-year-old Anna Elizabeth Gray in Boston.See confession letter published in The National Era, reprinted in The Works of William Wells Brown Farrison, William Edward. William Wells Brown: Author and Reformer (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1969), p. 290.
In 1856, Well's daughter Josephine Brown published Biography of an American Bondman (1856), an updated account of his life. She drew extensively on material from her father's 1847 autobiography. She added details about abuses he had suffered as a slave, as well as new material about his years in Europe.
Move to New York
From 1836 to about 1845, Brown made his home in Buffalo, New York, where he worked as a steamboat man on Lake Erie. He helped many fugitive slaves gain their freedom by hiding them on the boat to take them to Buffalo, or Detroit, Michigan, or across the lake to Canada. He later wrote that during the seven-month period of time from May to December 1842, he had helped 69 fugitives reach Canada.Brown, William Wells. "Narrative of William W. Brown", in Slave Narratives, William Andrews and Henry Louis Gates, eds (Literary Classics of United States Inc, 2000), 374–423.Farrison, William E. "William Wells Brown in Buffalo", Journal of Negro History, v.XXXIX, no. 4, October 1954. Brown became active in the abolitionist movement in Buffalo by joining several anti-slavery societies and the Colored Conventions Movement. Brown's work in anti-slavery societies often included public speaking, and he frequently used music as part of his performance. Brown's use of music in his speeches emphasizes music's role in the anti-slavery movement of the 1840s. He "traveled with a slavery-themed travelling panorama". While living in Buffalo, Brown also organized a Temperance Society, which quickly gained 500 members. At the time there were only 700 black people living in Buffalo.
Years in Europe In 1849, Brown left the United States with his two young daughters to travel in the British Isles to lecture against slavery. He wanted them to gain the education he had been denied.Garret & Robbins, xxiv. He was also traveling that year as a representative of the US at the International Peace Congress in Paris. Given passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 in the US, which increased penalties and more severely enforced capture of fugitive slaves, he chose to stay in England until 1854. That year his freedom was purchased by British friends. As a highly visible public figure in the US, he was at risk for capture as a fugitive and re-enslavement. Slave catchers were paid high bounties to return slaves to their owners, and the new law required enforcement even by free states and their citizens, although many resisted.
Brown lectured widely to antislavery circuits in the UK to build support for the US movement. He often showed a metal slave collar as demonstration of the institution's evils.Greenspan (2008), William Wells Brown. An article in the Scotch Independent reported the following:
Brown also used this time to learn more about the cultures, religions, and different concepts of European nations. He felt that he needed always to be learning, in order to catch up and live in a society where others had been given an education when young. In his 1852 memoir of travel in Europe, he wrote,
At the International Peace Conference in Paris, Brown faced opposition while representing the country that had enslaved him. Later he confronted American slaveholders on the grounds of the Crystal Palace.Greenspan, Ezra William Wells Brown; A Reader, Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia, 2008.
Based on this journey, Brown wrote Three Years in Europe: or Places I Have Seen And People I Have Met. His travel account was popular with middle-class readers as he recounted sightseeing trips to the foundational monuments of European culture. In his Letter XIV, Brown wrote about his meeting with the Christian philosopher Thomas Dick in 1851.s:Three Years in Europe/Letter XIV.
Abolition orator and writer After his return to the US, Brown gave lectures for the abolitionist movement in New York and Massachusetts. He soon focused on anti-slavery efforts. His speeches expressed his belief in the power of moral suasion and the importance of nonviolence. He often attacked the supposed American ideal of democracy and the use of religion to promote submissiveness among slaves. Brown constantly refuted the idea of black inferiority.
Due to his reputation as a powerful orator, Brown was invited to the National Convention of Colored Citizens, where he met other prominent abolitionists. When the Liberty Party formed, he chose to remain independent, believing that the abolitionist movement should avoid becoming entrenched in politics. He continued to support the Garrisonian approach to abolitionism. He shared his own experiences and insight into slavery in order to convince others to support the cause.
Literary works In 1847, he published his memoir, the Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, which became a bestseller across the United States, second only to Frederick Douglass's slave narrative memoir. Brown critiques his master's lack of Christian values and the customary brutal use of violence by owners in master-slave relations.
When Brown lived in Britain, he wrote more works, including travel accounts and plays. His first novel, entitled Clotel, or, The President's Daughter: a Narrative of Slave Life in the United States, was published in London in 1853. It portrays the fictional plight of two mulatto (mixed-race) daughters born to Thomas Jefferson and one of his slaves. His novel is believed to be the first written by an African American.Nelson, Randy F. The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: 67. .
Historically, Jefferson's household was known to include numerous mixed-race slaves, and there were rumors since the early 19th century that he had children with a slave, Sally Hemings. In 1826 Jefferson freed five mixed-race slaves in his will; most historians now believe that two brothers, Madison and Eston Hemings, were among his four surviving children from his long-term forced relationship with Sally Hemings."Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: A Brief Account", Monticello Website, accessed 22 June 2011, Quote: "Ten years later [referring to its 2000 report], TJF [Thomas Jefferson Foundation] and most historians now believe that, years after his wife's death, Thomas Jefferson was the father of the six children of Sally Hemings mentioned in Jefferson's records, including Beverly, Harriet, Madison and Eston Hemings."
As Brown's novel was first published in England and not until later in the United States, it is not the first novel by an African American published in the US. This credit goes to either Harriet Wilson's Our Nig (1859) or Julia C. Collins's The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride (1865).
Most scholars agree that Brown is the first published African-American playwright. Brown wrote two plays after his return to the US: Experience; or, How to Give a Northern Man a Backbone (1856, unpublished and no longer extant) and The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom (1858). He read the latter aloud at abolitionist meetings in lieu of the typical lecture.