Louis Hughes was born as an enslaved person in Virginia and at age twelve was sold away from his mother, whom he never saw again. Sold to a wealthy slaveowner, who had a home near Memphis and plantation nearby in Mississippi, Hughes was held in bondage as an enslaved house servant for three decades. Near the end of the Civil War, he escaped to the Union lines with the paid help of two Union soldiers. Hughes later returned to the plantation to liberate his wife, and the couple made their way to safety in Canada. After the war, they traveled to Chicago and Detroit, eventually settling in Milwaukee as free people. There Hughes became relatively comfortable as a hotel attendant and as an entrepreneur laundry operator.
Self-educated and eloquent, Hughes wrote and privately published this memoir in 1897. It is a compelling first-hand account of his enslavement and treatment from slaveowners. No reader can be unmoved as Hughes tells about his five attempts to escape or having to stand by helplessly while watching his wife being whipped. He also recounts the joy of finally reuniting with his brother, whom he had not seen since they were little children in Virginia. Hughes’s story is a testimony to the human spirit and his courageous act of self-liberation in the face of oppression, injustice, and terror.
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LOUIS HUGHES (1832-1913) was an African American enslaved person born in Virginia. He was enslaved for over thirty years, spending most of that time in Tennessee. During that time, he learned in secret how to read and write. Thirty-three years after gaining freedom at the end of the Civil War, he wrote his memoir Thirty Years a Slave, published in 1897. It is considered an essential text for understanding the experience of slavery in western Tennessee. Hughes died in Milwaukee in 1913.
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