Becoming Lunsford Lane

By challenging the rules of enslavement and, later, pushing the boundaries of free citizenship in North Carolina, Lunsford Lane (1803–79) became a folk hero to many enslaved Southerners, as well as a generation of abolitionists. Author of a unique “slave narrative” and a speaking partner with some of the era’s greatest orators, including William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Highland Garnett, William Well...