I don’t know how to begin my story, but I think it will be interest for my grandchildren to read about their grandmother. So, let’s start my narrative.
At first I’d like to introduce myself. Hello, I’m Natana. Now is 1850 and I want to tell you my story. I’m a black woman of 27 years old. I was born in 1823 in a poor family. My mother and father were slaves and I was born as a slave too. When I was 6 my father died from unknown illness and I stayed with my mother. There were no treatment for us and soon my mother left this world too. It was a big tragedy for me to loose both my parents, but I can’t do anything. I can say that I have no childhood, only work, very hard work on my master’s plantations. I was afraid of all and the most horrible thing for me was a talk with my masters’ wife. She was an angry woman and I was always punished after our talk. But one day she decided to solve me. I was 23 and one old prosperous man bought me at the slave market. He was a kind person and bought me for his daughter to help her. I loved their family and in two years he presents me a free life. Now I am a free black woman. It is unbelievable, but it is true: I am a free woman. It happened only thanking to my master. I stayed in their house, because I have no place to go, but now I have a good and big aim to help my black sisters and brothers.
I know what does it mean to be a slave and I decided that I should to do all for helping my black nation. We moved to Chicago this year and my master; I appreciate him for his present and from the day of our meeting call him in such a way, is an activist of antislavery movement.
As you know this year was accepted a horrible law about delivery of fugitive slaves to South for returning their owners. But society can’t look calmly on such laws and a lot of different antislavery movements organized nowadays. The most popular is the “tubular railway”, a secret organization which helps fugitive slaves to run away from their owners and to become free people. Chicago now became something like a free zone for the fugitive slaves and we in our turn help them to find work and to begin their normal life.
You will never understand what does it mean to became a free person till you was a slave.
Now my big wish is to help people of Negro race to find themselves in new for them status and be an active participants of so important and, at the same time, very hard work, which is called antislavery movement.
Every person should be free from the day of birth till the last day of the life!
My story is little, but my heart is big and open for all, who need my help.