Henry Bibb

Henry Bibb (1815-1854) was an author and abolitionist who was born a slave, and who ran away to Canada.

Biography

He was born to a slave woman, Milldred Jackson, and supposedly to James Bibb, a Kentucky state senator, on a Kentucky plantation on May 10, 1815. There he saw his seven siblings sold away to other slaveholders.

In 1833, he married a mulatto slave, Malinda, and they had a daughter, Mary Frances.

In 1842, he managed to flee to Detroit. After finding out that Malinda had been sold as a mistress to a white planter, he focused on his career as an abolitionist.

In 1849-50 he published his autobiography, just before the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

He then fled to Canada and settled in Ontario with his second wife, Mary Miles Bibb.

In 1851, he set up the first black newspaper in Canada, Voice of the Fugitive. It was in this paper that, in 1852, he published the account of three of his brothers who had also fled to Canada.

Bibliography

• Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, Written by Himself, 1849

External links

• full text of his autobiography
• Works by Henry Bibb at Project Gutenberg