The Colored Vigilant Committee of Detroit: Community Organization, African American Militancy, and the Underground Railroad

Speaking in 1837 of the nature of the Underground Railroad in the free states, white abolitionist James G. Birney reported that “such matters are almost uniformly managed by the colored people.”  Although the commonly-accepted image is one of brave and dedicated white Quakers assisting hapless fugitives, historical evidence suggests that more often than not runaway slaves were helped by African Americans.  Potent examples include the militant and highly-organized vigilance committees that emerged in the black communities of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Detroit in the late 1830s and early 1840s.  The most important and unique of these was the Colored Vigilant Committee of Detroit (CVC), organized in 1842 and continuing in operation until the last known fugitive slave passed through the city two decades later.  There were two primary reasons for the committee’s importance and uniqueness – one geographic, one political.  First, Detroit’s location made it the primary crossing point to Canada for fugitive slaves fleeing the Upper South states of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and western Virginia.  One historian has estimated that 30,000 runaways crossed the Detroit River between 1842 and 1862.  That means that fully half of the fugitive slaves in Canada at the beginning of the Civil War had crossed the Detroit River during the two preceding decades, most of them assisted by the CVC.  Second, the all-black CVC reflected the militancy of members of the city’s free black elite, particularly leaders such as William Lambert and George DeBaptiste, who developed a highly-organized freedom network in the city and its hinterlands and after 1850 operated relatively openly, without significant opposition or harassment by slave catchers.  As a result of the efforts of the CVC, the trickle of fugitive slaves coming through the city after the War of 1812 became a flood by the start of the Civil War.