Free Forbidden Fruit by Betty DeRamus

Mr. Johnson as well. William then begged the ticket master to let his
     master go, saying he might die if he didn’t receive treatment in Philadelphia soon.
     When Ellen spoke again in the voice of a young white man raised on mint juleps and
     money, the ticket master finally yielded, waving her on.
    In the Jim Crow section of the train to Philadelphia, William began creating his own
     Underground Railroad: he asked a free black man for information about Northern slave
     havens. This was a common first step for fugitives fleeing the Deep South; they sought
     help not from any established network of people who assisted fugitives, but from the
     first black person they saw. The free black man gave him the name of a boardinghouse
     run by abolitionists.
    Finally, the Crafts reached Philadelphia, where they could stand on free soil, breathe
     free air and walk around with a free spirit. At the edge of collapse, Ellen finally
     broke down and let her tears flow. It was Christmas, and they were in Philadelphia
     greeting black abolitionist leaders Robert Purvis and William Still, the latter chairman
     of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee. When Ellen wore her costume for them, they
     were stunned at how it changed her. However, Ellen stayed mostly in bed for a few
     days, recovering from her ordeal. The pair spent three weeks with an antislavery Quaker
     family, members of a religious group who called themselves Friends of Truth and spoke
     to each other the way they believed Jesus spoke to his biblical friends. Quakers believed
     in a personal God who spoke directly to their souls and constantly revealed his truths.
     Ellen distrusted them and all white people, but the family won her over with warm
     bowls of soup and kindness. William Wells Brown, a fugitive slave, author and antislavery
     speaker, also called on them, urging them to join him in speaking out against slavery.
    Despite the sheen of adventure that surrounds Underground Railroad sagas, only a small
     band of citizens actually aided slaves, and not all of them welcomed blacks into their
     homes or even churches except in segregated “negro seats,” as the American Anti-Slavery Almanac for 1840 pointed out. Yet many of those who sheltered slaves in Philadelphia and
     elsewhere truly cared about people of color. In Philadelphia, such friends urged the
     Crafts to push on to Boston, which was farther north and, perhaps, safer for a couple
     whose daring escape might spark an intense manhunt. After moving to Boston, the Crafts
     boarded with Lewis and Harriet Hayden at 66 Phillips Street, a brick brownstone with
     pine floors, marble fireplaces, an owner who had been a fugitive slave and a top floor
     that sheltered as many as thirteen runaways at a time. Hayden, a fugitive from Kentucky,
     had arrived in Boston in 1849, still smarting over the fact that, as he pointed out
     in his account of his life, his master had swapped him for a pair of horses. Hayden
     kept two kegs of gunpowder under his front stoop and had threatened to blow up the
     house rather than let any fugitives be taken from it.
    While Ellen sewed and learned upholstery, William Craft, who couldn’t find work as
     a cabinetmaker, opened a secondhand furniture store. Craft’s advertisement in the
     July 27, 1849, edition of the Liberator read:
    “William Craft. Dealer in New and Second Hand Furniture, No. 62 Federal Street Boston….
     All kinds of furniture cleaned and repaired with despatch [ sic ] in the most satisfactory manner. The patronage of his friends and the public is
     respectfully solicited.”
    The couple remained in Boston for two years and joined the congregation of the Reverend
     Theodore Parker. The Unitarian minister and social reformer claimed that when writing
     his sermons he kept a rifle on one side of his desk and a Bible on the other. It didn’t
     take long for the Crafts to need both physical protection and prayers. As they became
     full-fledged celebrities on the