Lunch & Learn: FLEE NORTH: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland

Program registration is recommended but not required.

Join Scott Shane, the author of FLEE NORTH: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland, to hear the astonishing story of Thomas Smallwood, born into slavery near Washington, who bought his freedom, became a shoemaker and began organizing mass escapes from slavery from Washington, Baltimore and the surrounding counties. With the help of a younger white abolitionist, Charles Torrey, Smallwood took wagonloads of men, women and children into Pennsylvania, urging them not to stop until they reached Canada. And Smallwood wrote about the escapes in satirical newspaper dispatches, an extraordinary work of journalism and literature in which he gave the underground railroad its name. Many of those Smallwood helped to flee north approached him after learning that they were about to be sold south by domestic slave traders like Hope Slatter, who operated his private "slave jail" near Baltimore's harbor.

FLEE NORTH was named one of the best 10 books of 2023 by Publishers Weekly ("This astonishing and propulsive narrative rights a historical wrong by returning [Thomas] Smallwood to prominence. It’s an absolute must-read”) and one of top 20 by Amazon (“Scott Shane’s narrative account is visceral, a stunning feat of historical storytelling as you’re transported into the terrifying life of an enslaved person in 1800s Baltimore"). Henry Louis Gates Jr. called it "riveting" and Taylor Branch called it "a treasure."

Scott Shane was a reporter for 15 years at The New York Times, where he was twice a member of teams that won Pulitzer Prizes, and before that for 21 years at The Baltimore Sun. His two previous books are Dismantling Utopia, a firsthand account of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Objective Troy, the story of an American terrorist killed in a drone strike on orders of President Obama. In 2019-2020 he was a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where he has taught courses on media and on the Russian attack on the 2016 American presidential election.

ASL interpretation will be available for attendees.

Presented in partnership with The Maryland State Archives and The Maryland Four Centuries Project.