Journey to Freedom: The Escape of Celia and Eliza Grayson presented by Gail Shaffer Blankenau

Author Gail Blankenau shares the story of the 1858 escape of Celia and Eliza Grayson, two enslaved Black women held by Stephen F. Nuckolls, an important figure in the history of the Nebraska Territory, where the presence and potential expansion of slavery was a pressing issue at the time. The Graysons’ escape and Nuckolls’s pursuit of them highlighted the existence of slavery in Nebraska and raised questions about whether the women were truly enslaved or free, based on their location, and called into question the effectiveness of popular sovereignty.  Their struggle contributed to legislative efforts to ban slavery in Nebraska and influenced national discussions on slavery as tensions mounted leading up to the Civil War.

Gail Shaffer Blankenau is a professional genealogist, historian, speaker, and author. She is the author of Journey to Freedom: Uncovering the Grayson Sisters’ Escape from Nebraska Territory (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2024). She holds an MA degree with honors in history from the University of Nebraska–Kearney and in 2023 she received the James L. Sellers prize for her article about the Grayson sisters in a volume of Nebraska History magazine. Blankenau is from Nebraska and currently lives in Lincoln, where she also serves on the state advisory board for the digitization of historic Nebraska newspapers.

This program is sponsored by Humanities Nebraska. We appreciate their support!