n>“After our arrival we went up to the town of Savannah; and the same evening I went to a friend’s house to lodge, whose name was Mosa, a black man. We were very happy at meeting each other… we had a light till between nine and ten o’clock at night. About that time the watch or patrole [sic] came by, and, discerning a light in the house, they knocked at the door… they said that all negroes, who had a light in their houses after nine o’clock were to be taken into custody, and either pay some dollars, or be flogged,” wrote Olaudah Equiano in his Interesting Narrative, published in 1789. Equiano related that the patrol took him into the city jail, where he witnessed the flogging of “a negro man and woman,” but he managed to escape that fate by protesting that he was a free man, and had legal protection against such treatment. Eventually, it was not Equiano’s appeal to his free status that extricated him from this harrowing situation, but his call to a White man, a Dr. Brady, who could vouch for him. Read Full Article »