172 years ago this week, a new fugitive slave law loomed large over the city of Boston. Southern slave hunters were now empowered to travel up North, catch anyone who’d escaped slavery, and return them to bondage. That’s why, in 1851, they rolled through town looking for Shadrach Minkins, who’d fled a plantation in Virginia. The Black abolitionists of the city made made it their mission to protect Shadrach. And they fought back — even if it meant breaking the law.
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