Case Study: James Bradley
Stolen for Slavery“I think I was between two and three years old when the soul-destroyers tore me from my mother’s arms, somewhere in Africa, far back from the sea. They carried me a long distance to a ship; all the way I looked back, and cried. The ship was full of men and women loaded with chains.”
-James Bradley (“Brief Account of an Emancipated Slave written by Himself,”The Oasis, June 1834) James Bradley, a Lane Rebel, was illegally sold as a slave to the Bradley family in Kentucky. |
"This man [Mr. Bradley] was considered a wonderfully kind master; and it is true that I was treated better than most of the slaves I knew. . . . but, oh my soul! I was tormented with kicks and knocks more than I can tell. . . . Once, when I was a boy, about nine years old, he struck me so hard that I fell down and lost my senses.” After his master died, James worked extra to buy his freedom in 1833. He went to Cincinnati, Ohio, a free state.
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"[I]n all respects I am treated just as kindly, and as much like a brother by the students [at Lane Seminary], as if my skins as white, and my education as good as their own. Thanks to the Lord, prejudice against color does not exist in Lane Seminary. If my life is spared, I shall probably spend several years here. . . .” |
Advocating AbolitionThirsting for education, Bradley attended Lane Seminary, becoming one of the first blacks in America to go to college.
Bradley was important in the Lane debates, offering moving testimonies of his enslavement. Afterwards, he transferred to Oberlin College. “They [slaves] have to take care of, and support themselves now, and their master, and his family into the bargain; and this being so, it would be strange if they could not provide for themselves, when disencumbered from this load.” -James Bradley in the Lane debates, as quoted by Henry B. Stanton, another debater Bradley became an abolitionist lecturer. At Oberlin, he enrolled in the Sheffield Institute. The institute folded after a year, after which nothing is known about Bradley’s life. |