Running from Bondage : Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America

Running from Bondage examines the ways in which enslaved women fought for their freedom during and after the Revolutionary War. Exploring who these women were and what motivated them to escape, Karen Cook Bell places their compelling stories within the broader historical narratives of slave resistance and the American Revolution.

Running from Bondage tells the compelling stories of enslaved women, who comprised one-third of all runaways, and the ways in which they fled or attempted to flee bondage during and after the Revolutionary War. Karen Cook Bell's enlightening and original contribution to the study of slave resistance in eighteenth-century America explores the individual and collective lives of these women and girls of diverse circumstances, while also providing details about what led them to escape. She demonstrates that there were in fact two wars being waged during the Revolutionary Era: a political revolution for independence from Great Britain and a social revolution for emancipation and equality in which Black women played an active role. Running from Bondage broadens and complicates how we study and teach this momentous event, one that emphasizes the chances taken by these 'Black founding mothers' and the important contributions they made to the cause of liberty.