Lunch and Learn – Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery

Speaker: Dr. Richard Bell, University of Maryland College Park

Join us for the first brown bag Lunch of Learn program of the new year. Professor Richard Bell from the University of Maryland History Department will discuss his new book, Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home, a 2017 NEH Public Scholar Award winning publication. This is a gripping, true story about five boys who were kidnapped in the North and smuggled into slavery in the Deep South—and their daring attempt to escape and bring their captors to justice. In Philadelphia in 1825, these five young, free black boys fell into the clutches of the most fearsome gang of kidnappers and slavers in the United States. Lured onto a small ship with the promise of food and pay, they were instead met with blindfolds, ropes, and knives. Over four long months, their kidnappers drove them overland into the Cotton Kingdom to be sold as slaves. Determined to resist, the boys formed a tight brotherhood as they struggled to free themselves and find their way home. Their ordeal—an odyssey that took them from the Philadelphia waterfront to the marshes of Mississippi and then onward still—shines a glaring spotlight on the Reverse Underground Railroad, a black-market network of human traffickers and slave traders who stole away thousands of legally free African Americans from their families in order to fuel slavery’s rapid expansion in the decades before the Civil War. Bring your lunch and your questions to this engaging, free event.

Registration: Please email or call Emily Oland Squires to RSVP to this free event at emily.squires@maryland.gov or 410-260-6443.

Please note: A valid photo ID is required to enter the Archives building.