Tuesday, June 6th at 12:00 p.m.
In honor of Juneteenth, the State Library of Massachusetts invites you to join them in their historic reading room in the Massachusetts State House to hear Ilyon Woo discuss her latest book, Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom.
Master Slave Husband Wife is the riveting, true story of Ellen and William Craft. The Crafts were a young, enslaved couple who, in 1848, made the perilous decision to flee from Macon, Georgia to seek freedom in the North. A journey like no other, Ellen disguised herself as an older, wealthy white man traveling with his slave, William. The book follows the Crafts as they make their way to Philadelphia, Boston, and eventually Canada. Along the way, the couple gained a certain celebrity status, joining the abolitionist movement with such leaders like Frederick Douglass. Woo’s well-researched book presents a story of the Crafts and antebellum America which reads almost like it could be a major movie with themes of freedom, self-emancipation, and love. COPIES ARE AVAILABLE AT CLAMS LIBRARIES.
In addition to Master Slave Husband Wife, Woo is the New York Times best-selling author of The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother’s Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times. She received a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Writing Grant for Master Slave Husband Wife. Woo’s writing has also appeared in the Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and The New York Times. Woo holds a BA in the Humanities from Yale College and a PhD in English from Columbia University.
This is a hybrid event and participants can attend virtually via Livestream.
Location: State Library of Massachusetts, Room 341. Massachusetts State House, 24 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02133