April Slugs and Steins with Professor Gregory O’Malley
The Escapes of David George: An Odyssey of Slavery, Freedom, and the American Revolution
The Escapes of David George: An Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom in the Revolutionary Era describes the life of a man born enslaved in colonial Virginia, whose repeated escape attempts made his life a remarkable odyssey. He survived enslavement on Virginia and Carolina plantations, stints hiding in backcountry Carolina settlements, captivity in Native American communities, battlefields of the American Revolution, and evacuation as a refugee from the emerging United States. Along the way, he formed a family, became a preacher, and founded the first Black Baptist congregation in what became the United States. His surviving narrative offers the earliest known firsthand account of escaping slavery in North America. And because his struggle against slavery spanned the revolutionary era, his story offers a counterweight to the many biographies of white “founding fathers.” Instead of a fight for political freedom from Britain and monarchy, George’s life revealss a parallel quest for freedom from American slavery. To achieve his independence, George fled the United States in the moment of its creation.