Henry Walton Bibb in Abolitionists

Henry Walton Bibb in Abolitionists

Henry Walton Bibb (1815-1854) was a runaway slave and antislavery lecturer who published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, in 1849.

Bibb's mother was a slave but his father was a white Kentucky state senator named James Bibb. Henry made several attempts at escaping before he finally reached Canada in 1837.

Bibb returned to Kentucky a year later to bring his wife and child to freedom with him. Unfortunately, he was recaptured, and his multiple attempts to escape from slavery with his family were unsuccessful.

He escaped again on his own in 1840, moved to Detroit and remarried in 1848. When Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Bibb and his new wife fled to Canada, where he continued his activism and founded a church, a school, and several antislavery societies. He also founded the Voice of the Fugitive, Canada's first black newspaper, in January of 1851.