Dear Ellen Craft

Dear Ellen Craft,

This narrative was incredible, inspiring, and shocking. And I struggle to think of how shocking it must have been to any reader in 1860, as so many of the notions of race, class, and gender are utterly turned on their head. Your journey must have taken incredible strength; yet, there’s a sense of ease to it. While the logistics were certainly difficult, I can imagine any Southerner of the time reading this and feeling like a large number of slaves could pursue the exact same thing. It must have scared not only white Southerners, but Northerners and abolitionists too. Your journey and eventual freedom shows how an entire society and an entire system can be subverted through the act of passing. Whiteness and blackness, masculinity and femininity, poverty and wealth: these were seen as absolutes, and yet you’re able to adopt the opposite status overnight. Once the color of one’s skin and one’s gender is no longer an absolute, the idea that some people are inherently less than others no longer has any credence. In that way, the system set up for the benefit of rich white men begins to lose the tiniest shred of power.