SOURCE: “Introduction,” in The Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, and a Lecture Delivered Before the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Salem, 1847, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1969, pp. ix-xvii.

In the following introduction, Gara presents an overview of Brown's life and explains that many elements of his philosophy can be found in modern Black Nationalism.

“It is a terrible picture of slavery,” commented Edmund Quincy about William Wells Brown's newly written manuscript, “told with great simplicity. … There is no attempt at fine writing, but only a minute account of scenes and things he saw and suffered, told with a good deal of skill, propriety and delicacy.” Quincy was an abolitionist editor and the son of Harvard's president. When Brown asked him to read the manuscript, he intended only to glance at a few pages, but found it so good he could not put it down until interrupted by a...