Reproduced with permission from University of Alabama Press.

Mobile Commercial Register, June 16, 1832

Frontispiece from Slavery in Alabama, by James Benson Sellers (University of Alabama Press, 1950).

The symbolic depiction of the fugitive slave appeared regularly in newspapers from the early days. The runaway was generally represented by a man (more rarely a woman) who carried a bundle on his shoulder in which he had presumably put food and a change of clothes.