Register

The Escapes of David George with author Gregory E. O'Malley

Celebrating America's 250th on Zoom

Author and historian Gregory E. O'Malley will discuss his book, The Escapes of David George: An Odyssey of Slavery, Freedom, and the American Revolution in this Zoom webinar.

The book reveals a remarkable, untold experience of the American revolutionary period—a Black man’s quest for the freedom espoused by our Founders, but denied him and other enslaved people. 

When most Americans think of slavery, they do not picture the colonial or revolutionary eras. Yet, in fact, one of six inhabitants of the thirteen original colonies was enslaved. In 1762, at the age of 19, David George escaped from a plantation in Virginia. Running southwest by night, fording rivers and crossing borders, he embarked on a decades-long journey in and out of captivity that spanned multiple colonies and thousands of miles. George lived among White, Black, Creek, and Natchez settlements, fled to the British Army for the promise of liberty, founded what might have been the first Black Baptist church, helped to hack a settlement for refugees out of the Nova Scotia wilderness, and died as a leader of an experimental anti-slavery community in Sierra Leone.

Piecing together archival records and David George’s own brief account of his life—the earliest written testimony by a fugitive enslaved person in North America—Gregory O’Malley presents a thrilling narrative and a unique perspective on our nation’s origins, principles, and contradictions.

Greg O’Malley is a historian of slavery, the slave trade, and early America. He is professor and department chair in the History Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. O’Malley is also co-creator (with Alex Borucki) of the Intra-American Slave Trade Database, a free online research tool that documents more than 35,000 human trafficking voyages from one port in the Americas to another.

Due to limited space, if you know you cannot make it live, please do not register with zoom but please fill out THIS FORM to receive the video link instead.

This program is in partnership with the Ashland Public Library. Look out for additional virtual America 250th programs on Monday evenings.

Upcoming events