The Black fugitive who inspired ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ and the end of US slavery

In this drawing from 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' a Black child is taken from his mother by a white man. Culture Club/Getty Images

In or around 1825, John Andrew Jackson was born enslaved on a plantation in South Carolina and trained to spend his life picking cotton.

But instead of living a life as a slave, he escaped bondage and became an influential anti-slavery lecturer and writer. He also had a key role in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s celebrated novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which historians have argued helped trigger the Civil War by its depiction of the subhuman treatment afforded Black men and women.