Wallace Turnage (1846 – 1916) was an escaped slave who wrote a

narrative A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travelogue, etc.) or fictional ( fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller, novel, etc. ...

that was published for the first time in 2007. He was born in

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and ...

, and was the son of a fifteen-year-old female slave and a white man. He was sold multiple times and made repeated attempts to run away, and succeeded. He lived in New York and

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

, working as a waiter, janitor, glass blower, and finally as a watchman. His

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in ...

was passed on to his daughter, Lydia Turnage Connolly (1885 – 1984). After her death, it was another 20 years before it was published. In 2007, Civil War historian

David W. Blight David William Blight (born 1949) is the Sterling Professor of History, of African American Studies, and of American Studies and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. Previousl ...

published ''A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation'', the two men being Turnage and John M. Washington. A historic marker in Mobile, Alabama, reads as follows:

References

1846 births 1916 deaths 19th-century American slaves People who wrote slave narratives People from North Carolina 20th-century African-American people {{US-writer-stub