Location

by Sasha Wells

Published on Friday, January 24, 2025

The gallery down below has the ability to sort by location!

Unlike the ‘browse’ section, which is a wide search, you can do a narrow search here. By sorting through the locations of runaway slaves you will be able to see certain patterns emerge among those who chose to run away.

Location is very important. Runaways could move from island to island in The Bahamas. Or runaways would run from The Bahamas to places like Cuba or the United States. Sometimes runaways from those places would run to The Bahamas. Sorting by location allows you find out more about life on specific Bahamian islands through their runaway advertisements.

Enslaved men and women continually created a “rival geography,” featuring “other kinds of spaces that gave them room and time for their families, for rest from work, and for amusement.”¹

Flight, or absenteeism, not only secured time for rest or for visits to family members, but it also represented resistance to the spatial strictures enforced by overseers, passes, and slave patrols. It can be argued that the geography of each island and The Bahamas was perceived differently by White people versus the people of colour in the colony.