Moses Roper: Boston

"He inflicted this punishment, in order to get out of me how I got my irons off, but never succeeded. After this he hardly knew what to do with me, the whole stock of his cruelties seemed to be exhausted."

Moses Roper was known among American and British abolitionists not only as an active lecturer in the U.S. and England, but also as the author of Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery. Roper escaped slavery in North Carolina, traveling through New York and Vermont before settling for a time in Boston. There, he met William Lloyd Garrison and became involved in the American Anti-Slavery Society. According to his narrative, he attended the Belknap Street (now Joy Street) church until, as he wrote in his narrative, “after a time, I found slave-owners were in the habit of going to this colored chapel to look for runaway slaves.” The site (now the African Meeting House) houses the Museum of African American History, which is open to the public.

Roper’s Narrative, which recounts the brutal conditions of slavery as well as his own travels, was published in ten different editions in the decades following its publication, and was even translated into a Celtic language.