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Henry Brown, an enslaved man who worked in a tobacco factory and who watched as his wife and children were sold at auction, escaped north by shipping himself in a wooden crate measuring 3 feet long by 2 feet wide and 2 feet deep.

Thomas Clarkson was a dedicated abolitionist whose publications on the slave trade helped to raise awareness of the horrors of slavery and the Middle Passage. In his description of this image, Clarkson explained that he purchased these items in a…

This diagram of the slave ship “Brooks,” first published in 1788, became the most widely known and influential image used by abolitionist campaigners. It was redrawn and republished many times in Britain and America in the decades that followed. It…

After his escape north, Henry Brown collaborated with Boston artists to create a moving panorama, The Mirror or Slavery, that he exhibited in New England and through England to explain the evils of chattel slavery. Part of his panorama may have been…