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Henry Brown, an enslaved man who worked in a tobacco factory and who watched as his wife and children were sold at auction, escaped north by shipping himself in a wooden crate measuring 3 feet long by 2 feet wide and 2 feet deep.

Each year the American Anti-Slavery Society published an almanac containing poems, abolitionist tracts, and, beginning in 1838, drawings. As Angelina Grimké noted, "Until the pictures of the slave's sufferings were drawn and held up to the public…

This image documents a convention held in Cazenovia, New York, to protest the Fugitive Slave Act, a bill that was being considered in Congress. An estimated 2,000 to 3,000 people attended the meeting, including a number of escaped slaves and the…

Text and engravings of slave trade in District of Columbia and northern Virginia

Illustration of African in chains

This diagram of the slave ship “Brooks,” first published in 1788, became the most widely known and influential image used by abolitionist campaigners. It was redrawn and republished many times in Britain and America in the decades that followed. It…