Leonard Black

Biography

Leonard Black (March 8, 1820 – April 28, 1883) was born a slave in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and was separated from his family by the age of six. He escaped after 20 years of slavery. In 1847 he wrote The Life and Sufferings of Leonard Black: A Fugitive from Slavery. With encouragement and support, he became a Baptist minister, preaching in Boston, Providence, and Nantucket before becoming minister of First Baptist Church in Petersburg, Virginia. Black married twice in his lifetime. The first marriage was to a woman named Mary A. Black, a woman who died at some point in time after 1850 and with whom Black had five children. Her father, George Black, was an African-American Baptist minister who took him into his home after he escaped slavery and helped him become established. Black's second marriage was to Mary Anne Wheeden, with whom he had two children.

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