author
Henry Bibb
1815–1854
Born into slavery in Kentucky, he turned his own fight for freedom into a powerful memoir and a life of abolitionist activism. His story also reaches beyond the page: he helped found one of the earliest Black newspapers in Canada.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Henry Bibb was an American author, abolitionist, lecturer, and newspaper editor born in 1815 in Shelby County, Kentucky. Enslaved from birth, he made repeated attempts to escape before finally reaching freedom, and he later told that story in Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave (1849), a firsthand account that became part of the important literature of slavery and resistance.
After gaining freedom, Bibb became an active speaker against slavery in the United States and later settled in what is now Ontario with his wife Mary Bibb. Together they founded Voice of the Fugitive in 1851, widely recognized as the first Black newspaper in what was then Upper Canada, where it supported freedom seekers and argued strongly against slavery and racism.
He died in 1854 in Windsor, Canada West, but his work still matters because it connects personal testimony, journalism, and organizing. For listeners coming to his writing today, Bibb offers both a gripping life story and a clear picture of the courage it took to claim freedom.