author
David F. Dorr
Best known for a remarkable 1858 travel memoir, this formerly enslaved writer turned a journey across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East into a rare first-person account of race, freedom, and observation in the nineteenth century.
1 Audiobook
A Colored Man Round the World
by David F. Dorr
About the author
Born into slavery in New Orleans around 1827 or 1828, David F. Dorr later traveled abroad with his enslaver, Cornelius Fellowes. Those journeys took him through England, France, parts of continental Europe, and into places including Egypt and the Holy Land, giving him experiences that would shape his writing.
Dorr is remembered for A Colored Man Round the World (1858), a travel narrative he published himself in Cleveland. It is widely noted as the first book known to have been published by an African American in that city, and it stands out for the way it records international travel through the eyes of a Black American in the years before the Civil War.
Some basic details of his later life remain uncertain, but sources describe him as having lived roughly from 1827 to 1872. What survives most clearly is his singular voice: sharp, observant, and deeply aware of how race and freedom shaped the world he moved through.