Henry Box Brown

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Henry "Box" Brown (1815-1879) was a 19th century Virginia slave who escaped to freedom by arranging to have himself mailed to Philadelphia abolitionists in a dry goods container. For a short time he became a noted abolitionist speaker and later a showman, but later lost the support of the abolitionist community, notably Frederick Douglass, who wished Brown had kept quiet about his escape so that more slaves could have escaped using similar means.

Born into slavery in 1815 in Louisa County, Virginia, Brown was sent to Richmond in 1830 to work in a tobacco factory. There, he married another slave, Nancy, and the couple had three children. Brown used his wages to pay Nancy's master for the time she spent caring for them. However, in 1848, his wife and children were sold to a slave trader and sent to North Carolina. Brown claims that he was powerless to prevent this.

With the help of James C. A. Smith, and a sympathetic white storekeeper named Samuel Smith, Brown devised a plan to have himself shipped to a free state in a box, as if he were a container of dry goods. Brown paid $86 (out of his savings of $166) to Smith, who contacted Philadelphia abolitionist James Miller McKim, who agreed to receive the box. Brown burned his hand with oil of vitriol as a ruse to miss work.

During the trip, which began on March 29, 1849, Brown's box traveled by many means: by wagon, then railroad, steamboat, wagon again, railroad, ferry, railroad, and finally delivery wagon. Several times during the 27-hour journey, workers placed the box upside-down or handled it roughly, but Brown was able to remain still enough to avoid detection.

The box containing Brown was received by McKim, William Still and other members of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee. When Brown was released, one of those present remembered his first words as "How do you do, gentlemen?" He then sang a psalm from the Bible he had previously selected for his moment of freedom.

Brown became a well-known speaker for the Anti-Slavery Society. He was bestowed the nickname of "Box" at a Boston antislavery convention in May 1849, and thereafter used the name Henry Box Brown. He published two versions of his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown; first in Boston in 1849 and the second in Manchester, England in 1851. Brown exhibited a moving panorama titled "Mirror of Slavery" in the northeastern United States until he was forced to move to England after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Brown toured Britain with his antislavery panorama for the next 10 years, performing several hundred times a year and visiting virtually every town and city over that period.

Brown stayed on the British show circuit for 25 years, until 1875. In the 1860s, he began performing as a mesmerist, and some time after that as a conjuror, under the show names Prof. H. Box Brown and the African Prince. Leaving his first wife and children in slavery (though he had the means to purchase their freedom), he married a second time, to a white British woman, and began a new family. In 1875, he returned to the U.S. with a family magic act. There is also a later report of the Brown Family Jubilee Singers.

The cause and date of his death are unknown.

[edit] Cultural Responses

The Resurrection of Henry Box Brown at Philadelphia, a lithograph by Samuel Rowse, depicted Henry Brown emerging from the shipping box into freedom in Philadelphia. The lithograph was published to help raise funds to produce Brown's anti-slavery panorama. One of only three known originals is preserved in the collection of the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond.

There is a monument to Henry "Box" Brown along the Canal Walk in downtown Richmond, Virginia in the form of metal reproduction of the box in which Brown escaped.

In 1982, the comedy movie The Toy, starring Jackie Gleason and Richard Pryor, was released in theatres. Part of the comedy's input came from the story of Henry "Box" Brown. The movie portrays Gleason as U.S. Bates, a Randolph Hearst kind of businessman, who hires Jack Brown, an unemployed writer (played by Pryor), to become a living plaything to entertain his son who is on Spring Break from military school. Jack is delivered to the Bates mansion in a gift-wrapped box loaded with styrofoam. Jack brings much love and happiness to their home and is eventually hired by U.S. to work on his newspaper.

In 1997, Brown was the subject of a Tony Kushner play entitled Henry Box Brown or the Mirror of Slavery. Thomas Bradshaw's play "Southern Promises," produced at PS122 in New York City in 2008, although features a character inspired by Brown. Brown was also the subject of an eponymous named song, Henry "Box" Brown by the band, The Deedle Deedle Dee's.

[edit] Additional reading

• Brown, Henry. Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown.  (Revised version with introduction by Richard Newman, foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.)
• Ruggles, Jeffrey (2003). The Boxing of Henry Brown. Richmond, Virginia: Library of Virginia. 
• Scholarship on Adams Express, the shipping company that delivered Henry Box Brown

[edit] External links

• Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself. Manchester: Printed by Lee and Glynn, 1851.
• Narrative of Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped from Slavery, Enclosed in a Box 3 Feet Long and 2 Wide. Boston: Brown and Stearns, 1849.
• Digital History website, African American Voices
• African American History; Henry Box Brown webpage
• Virginia Historical Society
• Encyclopedia Virginia: Henry 'Box' Brown
• Henry "Box" Brown Wax Figure @ The National Great Blacks in Wax Museum, Baltimore, Maryland