October 4, 1842
George Latimer and his pregnant wife, Rebecca, made a desperate leap for liberty. They escaped from Norfolk, Virginia, hiding in the hold of a ship for nine hours. They stole away to Baltimore, then to Philadelphia, before arriving in Boston.
Four days after Latimer’s escape, Latimer’s owner, James Gray, described Latimer’s complexion as “a bright yellow” in an advertisement. Latimer was able to pass as white, so he “travelled as a gentleman” while his wife traveled as his servant. While boarding the ship in Norfolk, Latimer walked by a man he knew. He quickly pulled his Quaker hat over his eyes, entered the first-class cabin, and was not recognized.
In antebellum America, runaway slaves wore white skin like a cloak. Racial ambiguity, appropriate dress—Latimer’s Quaker hat, for instance—and proper comportment could mask one’s enslaved status and provide a strategy for escape. Once Latimer was seated in the first-class cabin, it would have been impolite for a passenger or a conductor to question his racial identity.
Tactical or strategic passing—passing temporarily with a particular purpose in mind—was born out of a dogged desire for freedom. In later historical periods, this type of passing would allow racially ambiguous men and women to access employment opportunities, to travel without humiliation, and to attend elite colleges. In the antebellum period, passing was connected to a larger struggle and to strivings for freedom.
The countless men and women who passed successfully demonstrate that even in the most totalizing systems, there is always some slack. Passing was an expedient means of securing one’s freedom, and in its broadest formulation, it became a crucial channel through which African Americans called for the recognition of their humanity. The desperate acts of enslaved men and women were not freighted with the internal conflicts, tensions, or moral angst of other historical periods. Surrounded by loss, enslaved people were motivated by a desire to be reunited with their families, not to leave them behind. Many runaway slaves neither imagined nor desired to begin new lives as white. They simply wanted to be free.
Latimer had been beaten severely while he was enslaved, sometimes in front of his wife. When he was returning from the market with Rebecca, his owner struck him with a stick across his jaw, bruising his skin. His owner followed Latimer to a store, where he hit him with a stick nearly twenty times. Latimer said that if he were captured, he expected to be “beaten and whipped 39 lashes, and perhaps to be washed in pickle afterwards.”
“We all know on a certain, almost intuitive level that violence is inseparable from slavery,” historian Nell Painter has written. “We readily acknowledge the existence of certain conventions associated with slavery: the use of physical violence to make slaves obedient and submissive, the unquestioned right of owners to use people they owned in whatever ways they wished.”
Shortly after Latimer and his wife reached Boston, James Gray arrived in the city and had Latimer arrested on a charge of larceny. Nearly three hundred Black men gathered around the courthouse to prevent Latimer from being returned to Gray, who planned to send Latimer back to Virginia. A chaotic meeting in Faneuil Hall roused public sympathy for Latimer and sharpened abolitionists’ demands for legislation to protect fugitive slaves.
Latimer’s escape took place in 1842, the same year as Prigg v. Pennsylvania. This decision allowed states to forbid officials from cooperating with federal legislation like the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which guaranteed slave owners the right to recover runaway slaves. The Prigg decision was later overturned by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required free states to support the capture and delivery of fugitive slaves, even if it meant deputizing local law enforcement.
In November 1842, Latimer’s supporters in Boston founded a newspaper, the Latimer Journal and North Star. With a circulation of twenty thousand, the Journal sought to raise public support for fugitive slaves among antislavery Bostonians. In an interview, an editor asked Latimer if he had ever led Gray or anyone else to believe that he wanted to return to Norfolk. “No, never,” Latimer declared. “I would rather die than go back.” James Gray tried to get Latimer to return willingly, to avoid all the trouble and the chaos created by the meeting in Faneuil Hall. Gray promised to “serve [Latimer] well.” Latimer turned his back on Gray and stated bluntly: “Mr. Gray, when you get me back to Norfolk you may kill me.”
What about Rebecca? We know very little about her besides what was published in an advertisement after she escaped:
RANAWAY from the subscriber last evening, negro Woman REBECCA, in company (as is supposed) with her husband, George Latimer, belonging to Mr. James B. Gray, of this place. She is about 20 years of age, dark mulatto or copper colored, good countenance, bland voice and self-possessed and easy in her manners when addressed.—She was married in February last [1842] and at this time obviously enceinte [pregnant]. She will in all probability endeavor to reach some one of the free States. All persons are hereby cautioned against harboring said slave, and masters of vessels from carrying her from this port. The above reward [$50] will be paid upon delivery to Mary D. Sayer.
Rebecca must have ached for freedom just as desperately as her husband did, not only for herself but also for the unborn child that she carried on their perilous journey.
Who was Mary D. Sayer? Did she own Rebecca? Perhaps her husband did. Her status as a white woman may have depended on Rebecca’s labor. Perhaps Sayer stood high on the social ladder (but never at the top, a space occupied exclusively by white men). She lived with the discomfort of knowing that, as Painter explains, white men had unfettered sexual access to all women and saw “women—whether slave or free, wealthy or impoverished, cultured or untutored, black or white—as interchangeable.” There was nothing that Mary Sayer could do to prevent her husband from sleeping with enslaved women, who in turn were forced to be readily available sexual partners.
On November 18, 1842, Latimer was finally manumitted for $400 and could not be returned to Virginia. In 1843 approximately sixty-five thousand residents signed a petition, which led to passage of the “Latimer Law,” a liberty law that (1) prevented state officials from assisting in the arrest of fugitive slaves, (2) forbade the use of jails to detain fugitive slaves, and (3) formally separated Massachusetts residents from any connection with slavery. Judges, justices of the peace, and other state officers could not legally assist in the arrest of any fugitive slave.
In an autobiographical sketch published in the same year as the Latimer Law, Latimer wrote that he had always imagined running away, even as a child. He would roll up his sleeve and wonder, “Can this flesh belong to any man as horses do?”
We can only imagine the conversation that George and Rebecca Latimer shared as they lay in the hold of the ship for nine hours during their flight from Norfolk. Maybe they pictured their lives as free people. Maybe they talked about their dreams for their child and touched Rebecca’s growing stomach. Maybe they worried that George’s disguise as a white man might fail. Maybe they did not speak a word to each other. What we do know is that these two souls believed deeply in their humanity, and that they risked everything for it to be recognized.