In the small span of his thirty-nine years he would live to be reunited with three of his brothers who had fled to Canada.Ī DOCSOUTH BOOK. Unwilling to abandon those he loved, he risked recapture several times to free them from enslavement, too. Henry Bibb was above all resilient and determined to achieve freedom for himself and others. Unusually, Bibb survived enslavement in the Deep South and later described it, and his narrative offers documentation of African folkways including conjuring and an account of Native American slaveholding practices as well. Scholars have pointed out that Bibb’s narrative has several distinguishing features among the larger body of slave narratives. Having finally settled in Detroit in 1842, Bibb joined the abolitionist lecture circuit and lived the rest of his days as a well-known African American activist who believed that Canada might offer a haven for the formerly enslaved.īibb’s autobiography, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, was published in 1849. His narrative documents his persistent attempts to escape to freedom, beginning at age ten, offering an insider’s view of the degradation and varieties of slavery as well as its bitter legacies within families. His father was a state senator who never acknowledged him. Henry Bibb (1815-1854) was born to an enslaved woman named Mildred Jackson in Shelby County, Kentucky.
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