THINKING INSIDE THE BOX

Henry Brown escaped slavery by squeezing into a crate that a White sympathizer shipped to Philadelphia, addressed to an ally there. When the abolitionist opened the box, Brown popped out and sang a hymn: “Be joyful, be glad, be joyful and glad.” His theatrical feat soon brought Brown fame that he parlayed into an eccentric multi-media theatrical career on two continents.

“I entered the world a slave,” he wrote in a memoir. “They robbed me of myself before I could know the nature of their wicked arts.”

Born into bondage on a Virginia plantation in about 1815, Brown worked the fields until his owner died