On March 23, 1849, Henry Brown climbed into a large wooden postal
crate and was mailed from slavery in Richmond, Virginia, to freedom
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. "Box Brown," as he came to be known
after this astounding feat, went on to carve out a career as an
abolitionist speaker, actor, magician, hypnotist, and even faith
healer, traveling the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada
until his death in 1897. The Many Resurrections of Henry Box Brown
is the first book to show how subversive performances were woven
into Brown's entire life, from his early days practicing magic in
Virginia while enslaved, to his last shows in Canada and England in
the 1890s. It recovers forgotten elements of Brown's history to
illustrate the ways he made himself a spectacle on abolitionist
lecture circuits via outlandish performances, and then fell off
these circuits and went on to reinvent himself again and again.
Brown's stunts included creating a moving panoramic picture show
about his escape; parading through the streets dressed as a "Savage
Indian" or "African Prince"; convincing hypnotized individuals that
they were sheep who would gobble down raw cabbage; performing
magic, dark seances, and ventriloquism; and even climbing back into
his "original" box to jump out of it on stage. In this study,
Martha J. Cutter analyzes contemporary resurrections of Brown's
persona by leading poets, writers, and visual artists. Both in
Brown's time and in ours, stories were created, invented, and
embellished about Brown, continuing to recreate his intriguing,
albeit fragmentary and elusive, story. The Many Resurrections of
Henry Box Brown fosters a new understanding not only of Brown's
life but of modern Black performance art that provocatively
dramatizes the unfinished work of African American freedom.
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