1. The Vanishing Woman
Ellen Craft disguises herself as a sickly white male planter and travels openly from Georgia with her husband William posing as the enslaved servant of his supposed master. Trains, steamers, hotels and ticket offices become sites of danger as officials question Ellen’s inability to sign documents…
2. The Disappearing Man
Henry Brown endures urban slavery in Richmond and the destruction of his family when his wife and children are sold away. With conventional routes blocked, he agrees to an extraordinary plan: he will be sealed inside a wooden shipping crate and sent by express freight to…
3. The Tubman Train
Araminta Ross grows up enslaved on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, surviving family separation, brutal labour and a head injury that leaves her with seizures and vivid spiritual experiences. Renaming herself Harriet Tubman, she escapes north in 1849 but cannot accept freedom while those she loves remain in…
4. The Lincoln League
John Scobell, a formerly enslaved man recruited by Allan Pinkerton, enters Confederate territory as a Union intelligence operative. His ability to move through spaces where white observers dismiss him becomes both a weapon and a danger as he gathers military information and works with a clandestine…
5. The Dixie Devil
Union occupation overturns the precarious world of New Orleans’s free Black community. André Cailloux joins the Louisiana Native Guard while his wife Félicie confronts the risks placed on their family, and the city’s Catholic institutions become entangled with arguments over abolition, loyalty and Black military service.…