Charles Ball

Charles Ball was born a slave in Maryland, the grandson of an African sold in Calvert County, Maryland. Ball was forcibly separated from his mother as a child and, when his first owner died, he was sold to another Maryland family. Eventually he fell into the hands of a slave trader who, seeking more profitable markets for his property in the South, marched Ball as far as the Carolinas. Later, Ball would twice escape from his bondage and eventually publish two popular books detailing his experiences as a slave in the South.

In an early chapter of his 1859 book Fifty Years in Chains, Ball details his first days with a new master in South Carolina. He witnesses a group of slaves at work in a cotton field, where he falls into conversation with a slave foreman. Noticing that the old gentleman wears...