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Lewis Hayden

1815 - c. 1889

Name: Lewis Hayden

Birthplace: KY

Status: Fugitive slave

Occupation/Training: Organizer, Militant Activist, Speaker, Politician

Residence: KY, Boston MA

Abolitionist Involvement: Hayden's own rescuer had been arrested for assisting him, and this apparently provided an impetus to Hayden's desire to help other fugitives. By August 1849, Hayden was able to raise $650.00 to pay his former owners, which resulted in his rescuer receiving a pardon and being released from jail.

Boston's Vigilance Committee had previously been a predominantly white abolitionist group, and had not been pro-active in its focus. Hayden became a consistent leader of civil disobedience. He was arrested for complicity in the forcible rescue of a recaptured runaway slave from a Boston courtroom, but was never sentenced. The group was reorganized under predominantly Black leadership, with its meetings held at Hayden's home. By 1851, under this new leadership, the Vigilance Committee had assisted sixty-nine recorded fugitives, and had forty-nine members who were willing to actively rescue fugitives and harbor them in their homes.

Hayden was often visited by other well known abolitionists. Once, when Harriet Beecher Stowe visited him, she counted thirteen escaped slaves at Hayden's home. He was also a personal friend of Harriet Tubman.

In 1873, Hayden was elected to serve in the Massachusetts Legislature. Upon his death in 1889, a scholarship fund at Harvard University for Black students was established by his widow.

Family: Wife - Harriet

Place of Death: MA

References: Black Abolitionists, by Benjamin Quarles; Holy Warriors, by James Stewart; There is a River, by Vincent Harding

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