Wallace Turnage (c. 1846 – 1916)[1] was an enslaved African American who recounted his story of repeatedly trying to escape brutal slaveowners before escaping to Union Army lines. He moved to New York City with his family and lived in economic poverty. He wrote a narrative about his life.[1] It was published for the first time in 2007.
He was born in North Carolina, and was the son of a fifteen-year-old female slave and a white man.[2] He was sold multiple times and made repeated attempts to run away, and succeeded. He lived in New York and New Jersey, working as a waiter, janitor, glass blower, and finally as a watchman.[3]
His manuscript was passed on to his daughter, Lydia Turnage Connolly (1885 – 1984). After her death, it was another 20 years before it was published. In 2007, Civil War historian David W. Blight published A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation, the two men being Turnage and John M. Washington.
A historic marker in Mobile, Alabama, reads as follows: