05/22/2026
Bounty hunters would cross the Ohio River to capture Black people who had escaped slavery. (Toni Morrison wrote Beloved based on a real story of a woman who refused to let her children be enslaved in this way.) A contemporary news report described how a group of women in Ohio fought back when the slave-catchers arrived:
âThe women began to gather from adjoining houses until the Amazons were about equal to the [slave-catchers]-- the former with shovels, tongs, washboards and rolling pins; the latter with revolvers, sword-canes and bowie-knives. Finally the beseigers decamped, leaving the Amazons in possession of the field, amid the jeers and loud huzzahs of the crowd.â âThe North Star, African-American newspaper in Cincinnati, Ohio, August 1848
I could find no illustration of this event; shown is a drawing of African women leading a rebellion aboard a slave-trafficking clipper in the 18th century, by Hugo MartĂnez, in Rebecca Hallâs 2021 book Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts. A review in The Guardian says:
âHall discovered that out of the 35,000 slave ship voyages documented, there were revolts in a tenth of them. And when she analysed the difference between ships that had revolts and those that didnât, she discovered there were more women on the ships with uprisings. âHistorians literally say that this must be a fluke as we know that women didnât revolt,â she says.
âBut closer examination of slave ship records showed key new facts. There were procedures for running these ships, Hall explains â and right at the top was the instruction to keep everyone below deck and chained while you were on the coast of Africa. âBut once you got into the Atlantic, you unchained the women and children and brought them on deck,â she says. [I havenât read the book, but this article passes over a big reason for why: the European traffickers were ra**ng them.]
âThatâs when Hall began to find stories of women accessing the weapons chests and finding ways to unchain the men below. âThey used their mobility and access,â she says.â Looks like a great source.
One of the most historically salient (documented) instances of self-liberation was Oney Judge, who âabsconded from the household of the President of the United Statesâ in 1796. We know this because George Washington's steward placed a newspaper ad offering a reward for her recapture. See link for photo of that, along with other accounts of self-liberations from enslavement, singly or in groups: Ann Woods (who along with others used guns and dirks to fend off slave patrollers in Virginian), Lucy Higgs Nichols (who escaped by joining the Union army as a nurse), and women who disguised themselves as men, most famous the daring Ellen Craft. (see Comments).
https://oldwitch.substack.com/p/black-women-fight-back-against-slavers
