Box: Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom

This retelling follows Henry Brown’s 1849 escape from slavery. As a child, Henry and his siblings perform plantation labor, and later he is separated from his wife and children after they are moved away. He hires a carpenter to make a shipping box large enough to hold him, then travels for two days by wagon, train, steamer, and cart from Richmond to Philadelphia. The book tells the story in fifty-one individually titled six-line poems and includes material from Brown’s autobiography.