Becoming Lunsford Lane : The Lives of an American Aeneas

By challenging the rules of enslavement and, later, pushing the boundaries of free citizenship in North Carolina, Lunsford Lane (1803-79) became a folk hero to many enslaved Southerners, as well as a generation of abolitionists.Author of a unique "slave narrative" and a speaking partner with some of the era's greatest orators, including William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Highland Garnett, William Wells Brown, and Frederick Douglass, Lane became a celebrity who watched as the persona he created gradually faltered and failed him and his family.Yet even as his influence waned, Lane's enemies pounced-a white mob determined to tar and feather him, reformers who saw his contributions to abolition as a threat to their causes, and a neighbor who attempted to set fire to the Lane home while Lunsford and his family slept within.It was also powerful enough to inspire many to remake him for their own purposes: as a fugitive from slavery, an entrepreneur, a Christian minister, and even an abolitionist (