Henry Bibb

Henry Bibb, copper engraving by Patrick H. Reason

Part of a series on Slavery
Contemporary Child labour Child soldiers Conscription Debt Forced marriage Bride buying Wife selling Forced prostitution Human trafficking Peonage Penal labour Contemporary Africa 21st-century Islamism Sexual slavery Wage slavery
Historical Antiquity Ancient Rome Ancient Greece Asia Babylonia Medieval Europe The Muslim World Byzantine Empire Ottoman Empire Crimean Khanate Topics and practices Atlantic slave trade Middle Passage Arab slave trade Ghilman Mamluk Saqaliba Harem Kafala system Ottoman slave trade Circassian beauties Crimean–Nogai raids Devshirme Millet system Imperial Harem Odalisque Barbary slave trade Barbary corsairs The Barbary Coast Turkish Abductions Aztec Blackbirding Coolie Corvée labor Field slaves in the United States House slaves Kholop Panyarring Thrall Serfs History Russia Slave market Slave raiding Child soldiers Naval Galley slave Impressment Pirates Shanghaiing Slave ship
By country or region Sub-Saharan Africa Contemporary Africa Slave Coast Angola Chad Ethiopia Mali Mauritania Niger Somalia South Africa Sudan Seychelles North and South America Americas indigenous U.S. Natives Brazil Lei Áurea Canada Caribbean Barbados Code Noir Cuba Haiti revolt Restavek Latin America (Encomienda) Puerto Rico Trinidad United States colonial maps female partus penal labor Slave codes interregional Human trafficking Virgin Islands Central, East, and South Asia Human trafficking in Southeast Asia Bhutan China Booi Aha Laogai India Debt bondage Chukri System Japan comfort women South Korea Yankee princess North Korea Vietnam Australia and Oceania Blackbirding in Australia Human trafficking in Australia Slave raiding in Easter Island Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea Blackbirding in Polynesia Europe and North Asia Sex trafficking in Europe Britain Denmark Dutch Republic Germany in World War II Malta Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Spain colonies Sweden North Africa and West Asia Iran Libya Human trafficking in the Middle East Yemen
Religion Slavery and religion Bible Christianity Catholicism Mormonism Islam 21st century Mukataba Ma malakat aymanukum Judaism Bahá'í Faith
Opposition and resistance Abolitionism U.K. U.S. Anti-Slavery International Blockade of Africa U.K. U.S. Colonization Liberia Sierra Leone Compensated emancipation Freedman manumission Freedom suit Abolitionists Slave Power Underground Railroad songs Slave rebellion Slave Trade Acts International law Third Servile War 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom
Related Common law Indentured servitude Unfree labour Fugitive slaves laws Great Dismal Swamp maroons List of slaves owners Slave narrative films songs Slave name Slave catcher Slave patrol Slave Route Project Treatment in U.S. breeding court cases Washington Jefferson Adams Lincoln 40 acres Freedmen's Bureau bit Emancipation Day

Henry Walton Bibb (May 10, 1815 in Cantalonia, Kentucky – 1854) was an American author and abolitionist who was born a slave. After escaping from slavery to Canada, he founded an abolitionist newspaper, The Voice of the Fugitive. He returned to the US and lectured against slavery.

Biography

Bibb was born to an enslaved woman, Milldred Jackson, on a Cantalonia, Kentucky, plantation on May 10, 1815. His people told him his white father was James Bibb, a Kentucky state senator, but Henry never knew him.^[1] As he was growing up, Bibb saw each of his six younger siblings, all boys, sold away to other slaveholders.^[1]

In 1833, Bibb married another mulatto slave, Malinda, who lived in Oldham County, Kentucky. They had a daughter, Mary Frances.^[1]

In 1842, he managed to flee to Detroit, from where he hoped to gain the freedom of his wife and daughter.^[1] After finding out that Malinda had been sold as a mistress to a white planter, Bibb focused on his career as an abolitionist. He traveled and lectured throughout the United States.^[1]

In 1849-50 he published his autobiography Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, Written by Himself,^[1] which became one of the best known slave narratives of the antebellum years. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 increased the danger to Bibb and his second wife Mary E. Miles, of Boston. It required Northerners to cooperate in the capture of escaped slaves. To ensure their safety, the Bibbs migrated to Canada and settled in Sandwich, Upper Canada now Windsor, Ontario.^[2]

In 1851, he set up the first black newspaper in Canada, The Voice of the Fugitive.^[1] The paper helped develop a more sympathetic climate for blacks in Canada as well as helped new arrivals to adjust.^[3] Due to his fame as an author, Bibb was reunited with three of his brothers, who separately had also escaped from slavery to Canada. In 1852 he published their accounts in his newspaper.^[1]

He died in 1854, at the age of 39.

Bibliography

• Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, Written by Himself, Self-published, New York: 1849

See also

• List of slaves

Reference

External links

• Works by Henry Bibb at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Henry Bibb at Internet Archive
• Works by Henry Bibb at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, Written by Himself. New York: Author, 1849.
• Voice of the Fugitive partial run, digitized from microfilm, at OurDigitalWorld's INK project.
• "Henry Bibb". Dictionary of Canadian Biography (online ed.). University of Toronto Press. 1979–2016.