By Janice Battikha
Actress Marcia Estabrook portrays Ellen Craft at Fiske Public Library. Photo by Terri Newfell.
Dressed elegantly in 19th century garb, Ellen Craft stood before a full house in the Sweatt Room of the Fiske Library on the evening of February 28th. “I know you are all wondering, but are too polite to ask,” she began. “Why is a white woman going to talk to you about escaping from slavery?” She went on to explain that she had been born a slave in Macon, Georgia, the daughter of an African American mother and her white master. “I will not call him father,” she said, “for he never treated me like a daughter. I was just his property.”
Craft, portrayed by character actress Marcia Estabrook, went on to describe her life as a slave, serving her half-sister Miss Lizzy. As a house-slave, she was well dressed, well-fed, and never beaten. So when her black husband, William, proposed that the two of them should escape, Craft was afraid and resisted. Finally, she conceived the idea of using her skin color to her advantage. Dressed as a white man, she boarded a train for Savannah, and traveled from there to Philadelphia. Her husband William posed as her slave.
In vivid detail, Estabrook related the harrowing facts and close calls of the trip north. Once in Philadelphia, the pair continued on to Boston, to Beacon Hill, the north slope of which was then called “Black Hill” for its black community. Estabrook held the audience in thrall as her gestures and facial expressions illustrated every scene, in the age-old tradition of the storytelling art. When she concluded her talk, she exited, but was called back for a second bow by an audience that rose to its feet and applauded loudly and enthusiastically.
The program was presented by the Wrentham Book Club and sponsored by the Wrentham Cultural Council, a local agency supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, and the Friends of the Fiske Library.
