wood, acrylic, sweet gum balls, United States of America flag fabric, Confederate flag fabric, acrylic on canvas

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Of course, there were stories of heroic escapes from the hell of slavery. One such tale provided the inspiration for DeVane’s 2015 installation Henry “Box” Brown (pp. 134–135). The motif of way finding in escape encapsulated in this work is balanced by the reality of those who could not escape or escaped only by enduring unconscionable hardship. Harriet Jacobs (1813–1897) might have shut herself away for seven years to evade the un-wanted advances of her enslaver, but Henry “Box” Brown (1815/16–1897) resolved to escape from slavery and enlisted the help of a free Black man and a white slaveowner, who conspired to ship him in a box to Philadelphia, which arrived there in March 1849 and

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