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Presented By: William L. Clements Library

Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home

Lecture by Dr. Richard Bell

Dr. Richard Bell, Historian Dr. Richard Bell, Historian
Dr. Richard Bell, Historian
Join us for a talk with Dr. Richard Bell, who will share the incredible story of five boys whose courage forever changed the fight against slavery in America.

Philadelphia, 1825: five young, free black boys fall into the clutches of the most fearsome gang of kidnappers and slavers in the United States. Lured onto a small ship with the promise of food and pay, they are instead met with blindfolds, ropes, and knives. Over four long months, their kidnappers drive them overland into the Cotton Kingdom to be sold as slaves. Determined to resist, the boys form a tight brotherhood as they struggle to free themselves and find their way home.

Their ordeal—an odyssey that takes them from the Philadelphia waterfront to the marshes of Mississippi and then onward still—shines a glaring spotlight on the Reverse Underground Railroad, a black market network of human traffickers and slave traders who stole away thousands of legally free African Americans from their families in order to fuel slavery’s rapid expansion in the decades before the Civil War.

Dr. Richard Bell is a Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He is the author of the new book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home which is shortlisted for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. He has won more than a dozen teaching awards, including the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest honor for teaching faculty in the Maryland state system. Rick has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar award. He serves as a Trustee of the Maryland Historical Society, as an elected member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

To order a signed copy of STOLEN directly from the author, send an email to rjbell(at)umd.edu with your shipping address. Payment options include Venmo, PayPal, Amazon gift card, cash, or check. Signed copies of STOLEN are $20, including delivery.
Dr. Richard Bell, Historian Dr. Richard Bell, Historian
Dr. Richard Bell, Historian

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