Born near Macon, GA, in 1826, Ellen Craft was a slave who famously fled from slavery in 1848. Ellen was very light-skinned, and used this trait to disguise herself as a young, ill white man while her husband William posed as her slave. The two fled North where they became prominent abolitionists.
When the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 put them in danger of being captured and returned to the South, they took refuge in England where they could raise their children and truly live as free people. However, after the Civil War, they returned to Georgia and established The Woodville Cooperative Farm School in 1873 to help newly emancipated men and women.
They recounted their story in the book “Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom.