Henry Box Brown in depth at the CBC (including Toronto laneway named in remembrance)

Updated February 12th to add:

• If you didn't already know, you can listen to the podcast referenced below using the CBC Listen app available at the App Store and Google Play.

 

Learn more about the CBC Ideas Podcast about Henry Box Brown at the bottom of the post.  
[with thanks to Jeff Evason for letting us know!]

 

From the February 4th article "How Henry Box Brown escaped slavery in a box and became a subversive magician" by Lisa Godfrey in the CBC:

Henry Box Brown eventually returned to the United States, more than a decade after abolition in 1865. He brought his second wife and children, who joined him onstage, and sang with him.

He made his home base in Canada: briefly in London, Ontario, and then settling in Toronto. It was here, Cutter discovered, that he died and was buried in 1897.

Three Toronto residents — history advocates Coralina Lemos, Adam Wynne, and Pancheta Barnett — recently worked together to have a laneway named for him, behind a house he lived in on Bright Street in the Corktown neighbourhood east of downtown. 

Read more.

 

 

From the February 3rd CBC Listen Ideas episode "The Amazing Henry Box Brown: From Fugitive Slave to Ingenious Entertainer" with Nahlah Ayed:

Enslaved in 1840s Virginia, Henry Brown has himself nailed into a postal crate and mailed to a free state. But that’s less than half his story. In freedom, he becomes Henry Box Brown, and uses his escape box as the basis for a subversive magic act that sees him tour the stages of the UK and Canada — his final home. 

Read more and listen to the podcast.

 

Henry Box Brown: The magician who escaped from slavery in a 3x2 foot box

From the May 29th article, "This ingenious slave mailed himself to freedom in a wooden box in 1849," by Mildred Europa Taylor in Face 2 Face Africa:

In 1875, he returned to the United States with his wife and daughter. Brown made a living as a magician.

His last performance took place in Ontario, Canada, on February 26, 1889.

Meanwhile, the two Smiths who had helped Brown to escape, Samuel and James, attempted to ship more enslaved people from Virginia to Philadelphia but they were caught and put on trial.

Read more.