Becoming Lunsford Lane

Approx. 432 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 20 halftones, 1 fig., 3 maps

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-8534-2
Published: May 2025

Hardcover Available May 2025, but pre-order your copy today!

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By challenging the rules of enslavement and, later, pushing the boundaries of free citizenship in North Carolina, Lunsford Lane (1803–79) became a folk hero to many enslaved Southerners, as well as a generation of abolitionists. Author of a unique "slave narrative" and a speaking partner with some of the era's greatest orators, including William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Highland Garnett, William Wells Brown, and Frederick Douglass, Lane became a celebrity who watched as the persona he created gradually faltered and failed him and his family. Yet even as his influence waned, it was still powerful enough to cause many to see him in light of their own purposes: as a fugitive from slavery, an entrepreneur, a Christian minister, and even an abolitionist (an identity he rejected). Lane’s enemies also continued their efforts to silence him—a white mob determined to tar and feather him, reformers who saw his contributions to abolition as a threat to their causes, and a neighbor who attempted to set fire to the Lane home while Lunsford and his family slept within.

In the first biography of Lunsford Lane based on original and extensive research, Craig Thompson Friend portrays a man who dreamed beyond his enslavement, delivered himself and his family from bondage, and spun a story of his life that brought him lasting freedom and fleeting fame. Friend casts light on Lane's family origins as well as his complex relationships with his wife, parents, children, enslavers, fellow abolitionists, and nation. Lane's story is a biography for our times: a man searching to define life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in a changing American society scarred by contentious politics, economic challenges, class tensions, loss of political rights, and racial violence.

About the Author

Craig Thompson Friend is professor of history at North Carolina State University.
For more information about Craig Thompson Friend, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"This is a work of true excellence, a stunning achievement that combines deep research with elegant prose. Friend's superb analysis draws a clear distinction between Lane the man and the inventive story of his life that Lane created. Though Friend goes to painstaking lengths to uncover Lane's full historical truth, it is his fascination with this intriguing person that makes this book so readable."—Douglas R. Egerton, Le Moyne College

"This is a vital work on one of the most underrated African American reformers of the antebellum era. The writing is strong and often elegant, the arc of the biography long, and the argument for Lane's importance is, quite simply, unimpeachable. Friend should be congratulated not only for producing a book that does justice to Lunsford Lane as an iconic figure in African American life and letters but also for crafting a biography that approaches high art. Beautiful and at times moving, this is one of the best books I have read in the past several years, on any topic."—Richard S. Newman, Rochester Institute of Technology

"Friend convincingly shows us that we haven't had a good look at the real Lunsford Lane—a father, husband, businessman, abolitionist, and medical practitioner—until now."—Antwain K. Hunter, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill