Henry Box Brown :: The Escape from Slavery

c.1816–June 15, 1897

Henry "Box" Brown was a 19th-century Virginia slave who escaped to freedom at the age of 33 by arranging to have himself mailed in a wooden crate to abolitionists in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Brown became a noted abolitionist speaker in the northeast United States. As a public figure and fugitive slave, Brown felt endangered by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which increased pressure to capture escaped enslaved people. 

As a result of that law, he moved to England and lived there for 25 years, touring with an anti-slavery group, performing as a featured magician, speaker, and mesmerist until 1889.