“This glorious land of liberty, freedom, and religious privilege.”
Those were the final words of a memoir written by William Hall. Born in Tennessee, by nine Hall was enslaved, and went through the ordeal faced by so many Black people of that era – traded, lashed, torn from his family. He was told in a cotton field about the death of his daughter, Rosetta – no time to grieve for a tragedy that every parent recognises as their worst fear.
Hall, incredibly, escaped from his captivity. He found freedom first in Canada, then Liverpool and Bristol. But it was in Cardiff where his liberty was enriched with happiness and purpose. And where he found a voice: Bute Street, in my constituency, was where his memoir was printed in 1862, concluding with those words about his new home.
