Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom

Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom is a memoir by Ellen Craft and William Craft, first published in 1860. It tells of their daring escape from slavery in Georgia. Ellen, who was light-skinned, could pass as white, while William was darker-skinned. Leveraging this, Ellen disguised herself as a white man (it was not customary for a white woman to travel alone with an enslaved man) and William as her enslaved servant. They traveled by train and steamboat, exploiting the racial norms of the time. Their ruse was successful, and they eventually reached Philadelphia, a free state.

Their escape garnered widespread attention and became a powerful example of cunning and courage in the face of slavery's oppression. Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom is one of the most compelling of the many slave narratives published before the Civil War, their book reaching wide audiences in the United Kingdom and the United States.

After their return to the U.S. in 1868, the Crafts opened an agricultural school in Georgia for freedmen's children. They worked at the school and its farm until 1890.