author
Leonard Black
1822–1883
Born into slavery in Maryland, this 19th-century writer turned his own escape and hard-won freedom into a vivid memoir. His story is both a firsthand account of bondage and a record of the faith and determination that shaped his later life as a minister.
1 Audiobook
The Life and Sufferings of Leonard Black, a Fugitive from Slavery
by Leonard Black
About the author
Born enslaved in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, Leonard Black was separated from his family as a child and spent about twenty years in slavery before escaping to the North. He later settled in New England, where he became active in Baptist circles and built a life far removed from the one forced on him in childhood.
In 1847 he published The Life and Sufferings of Leonard Black, a Fugitive from Slavery, a short autobiography written from personal experience. The book stands as part of the tradition of slave narratives, describing the violence of enslavement, the pain of family separation, and the central role of religion in his understanding of freedom.
Black later served as a Baptist minister, including pastorates in Virginia after the Civil War. Remembered both as an author and a preacher, he left behind a work that is valued for its direct voice and its witness to the realities of American slavery.