Ellen and William Craft - Return To The United States

Return To The United States

In 1868, after the American Civil War and passage of constitutional amendments granting emancipation, citizenship and rights to freedmen, the Crafts returned with three of their children to the United States. After raising funds from supporters, in 1870 they bought 1800 acres of land in Georgia near Savannah in Bryan County. There they founded the Woodville Co-operative Farm School in 1873 for the education and employment of freedmen. In 1876 William Craft was charged with misuse of funds, and he lost a libel case in 1878 in which he tried to clear his name. The school closed soon after. Although the Crafts tried to keep the farm running, dropping cotton prices, and post-Reconstruction era violence contributed to its failure. Whites discriminated against freedmen as they worked to re-establish white supremacy in politics and economics.

In 1890 the Crafts moved to Charleston, South Carolina to live with their daughter Ellen, who was married to Dr. William D. Crum, who would be appointed Collector of the Port of Charleston by President Theodore Roosevelt. The elder Ellen Craft died in 1897, and William in January 1900.

Read more about this topic:  Ellen And William Craft

Famous quotes containing the words return to the, united states, return to, return, united and/or states:

    We draw our Presidents from the people. It is a wholesome thing for them to return to the people. I came from them. I wish to be one of them again.
    Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)

    The United States is not a nation to which peace is a necessity.
    Grover Cleveland (1837–1908)

    Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or
    the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the
    cistern.
    Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit
    shall return unto God who gave it.
    Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity.
    Bible: Hebrew Ecclesiastes (l. XII, 6–7)

    ... one cannot be happy in exile or in oblivion. One cannot always be a stranger. I want to return to my homeland, make all my loved ones happy. I see no further than this.
    Albert Camus (1913–1960)

    There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.... The United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union.
    Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)

    We cannot feel strongly toward the totally unlike because it is unimaginable, unrealizable; nor yet toward the wholly like because it is stale—identity must always be dull company. The power of other natures over us lies in a stimulating difference which causes excitement and opens communication, in ideas similar to our own but not identical, in states of mind attainable but not actual.
    Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)