Mixed Experience History Month: William Wells Brown, writer

William Wells Brown, born into slavery in 1816, was the son of a white plantation owner and black slave.  Brown attempted to escape from slavery several times as a young man.  He succeeded New Year's Day 1834.  Brown became the husband of a free African-American woman and father to three daughters.  During the late 1830s and into the 1840s, he was a conductor of the Underground Railroad in New York state.

He was an active abolitionist and orator.  In 1847, he published his memoir, Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, which was second in popularity to Frederick Douglass' autobiography.

Brown was also a novelist and playwright.  His novel Clotel, or the President's Daughter: a Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853), gained much attention because of the parallels to the secret affair between Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemmings (who bore several of Jefferson's children.)

Brown who had moved abroad returned to the U.S. in 1854 when a friend "purchased" his freedom--as an escaped slave he was subject to the Fugitive Slave laws. 

He continued to write focusing on historical works. Brown died in 1884 in Massachusetts.

More information: Wikipedia;