‘Soul of the Underground Railroad’: David Ruggles, the man who rescued Frederick Douglass

Illustration by Andrea Brunty and Mara CorbettIn the deadThen, the pounding started. "A friend – David, open the door," the man said.The year was 1836, and though he was a free Black man living in New York City, nearly 150 miles north of the Mason-Dixon line, he could never be entirely safe from the surreptitious band of slave catchers that prowled the city.

Decades before Ida B. Wells-Barnett exposed the gory details of lynchings, Ruggles was a pioneering investigative journalist who wrote about free Black people being kidnapped and forced into slavery. One century before Malcolm X emerged as a fiery critic of American values, Ruggles was a gifted orator who inspired audiences to care about the liberation of slaves. And long before Harriet Tubman became the Moses of the enslaved, Ruggles was described as the"soul of the Underground Railroad.

Ruggles ultimately paid a steep price for his activism, exhausting himself and burning out way too soon. He died blind and ill at 39, never acquiring much fame or fortune. Shielded from the winds lashing off the Hudson River, Ruggles was sitting comfortably inside a stagecoach as he prepared to travel from New York to Newark, New Jersey, for business.

"Yes, you are unfortunate to be colored, it's true ... and it is against my rules to allow colored men to ride inside," the driver told Ruggles.

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