Book Exploring Women Slaves’ Fight for Freedom During Revolutionary War Earns Bowie State History Professor National Acclaim

Runaway Slave Advertisements Revealed Life Stories of Resilience and Perseverance

 

MEDIA CONTACT: David Thompson, dlthompson@bowiestate.edu, 301-860-4311

(BOWIE, Md.) – Did you know that about a third of the slaves trying to flee from their captors during the Revolutionary War were female? You’re not alone if you didn’t. Karen Cook-Bell, associate professor and chair of the History and Government Department at Bowie State, aims to close that knowledge gap with her scholarly research and book, Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America. The book, published last July, has been receiving acclaim not often bestowed upon academic works.

“Running from Bondage" was a finalist for the 2022 Pauli Murray Book Prize from the African American Intellectual History Society. Last December Professor Bell discussed her book at the Benjamin Franklin House in London— the worlds’ only remaining home of Benjamin Franklin opened to the public as a museum and educational facility.

The idea for the book was born while Bell was researching her first book, “Claiming Freedom,” which looks at the African American experience through the Civil War Reconstruction period. That work introduced her to women who fled slavery during the late 18^th century.

“This led me to question how widespread the escape of enslaved women was and my research really led me to the American Revolution, which, according to historian Benjamin Quarles, was the first large scale slave revolt in American history. So I wanted to tell the stories of these women who fled, or who attempted to flee,” she recalls. Her teaching, research and scholarship has focused on people who had been marginalized from power.

Bell says African Americans used both the Civil War and the Revolutionary wars as opportunities to escape slavery. “So I think my experience working with records related to the Civil War helped to inform my approach to how I looked at runaway slave advertisements during the American Revolutionary War.”

Published by Cambridge University Press, “Running from Bondage” relies upon trial records of fugitive slaves and runaway slave newspaper advertisements to reconstruct the life story of the enslaved women and to describe the circumstances that led to their escape or attempted escapes. In addition to the taste of freedom and personal choice their male counterparts fought by trying to escape, female slaves also fought for the freedom of their children for generations to come.

 “I think that historians who engage in archival research really do experience the same kinds of … feelings and emotions that our historical subjects likely felt,” said Bell when asked if she felt as if she were living the lives of the women she wrote about. She added that researchers become immersed in understanding the world in which they lived.

But despite the loss and the trauma that women trying to escape slavery experienced, Bell says, “their stories are also ones of resilience and perseverance.” She wants to uncover the stories about African American women that have not been told yet in order to showcase their contributions to this nation’s history. She would argue that Black women were an important part of the early abolitionist movement.

Bell notes there are similarities in what African American women experienced during the Revolutionary War and throughout history. Even recently, it was Black women behind initiatives such as Black Lives Matter.

“Black women have really been in the forefront in movements to address inequity and social oppression for centuries and I would argue that this is a fight that began during the Revolutionary era with the escape of enslaved women who protested with their feet by running away,” she says.

Bell is no stranger to scholarly research and publishing. She is currently editing a book under contract about Black women’s struggle for freedom during the Civil War and Reconstruction period.  The book is under contract with Cambridge University Press. She’s also co-editor, with English Professor Christopher Diller of Berry College, of a book on slavery that is under contract with Broadview Press.

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