Talk on diaries of escaped slave Talk on diaries of escaped slave (March 02, 2005)

It was a dark and stormy night in 1862 when William B. Gould and seven other slaves escaped onto the Cape Fear River in North Carolina, and made their way 28 miles to safety, when they were picked up by the USS Cambridge, a union ship blockading Wilmington.

Stanford law professor William B. Gould IV will give a lecture about his great-grandfather on Thursday, March 17, starting at 10 a.m. at The Sequoias, 501 Portola Road in Portola Valley. The lecture in Hanson Hall is free and open to the public.

Professor Gould's talk is based on the meticulous diaries his ancestor wrote, in elegant script, during the three years he spent serving "Uncle Samuel" on Union warships in the Navy during the Civil War.

"Diaries of a Contraband -- The Civil War Passage of a Black Sailor" was compiled by Professor Gould and published by the Stanford University Press in 2002. "Contraband" was what escaped slaves were called at the time -- implying they were things instead of people.

Professor Gould, the great-grandson, holds an endowed chair at the Stanford law school, where he specializes in labor law. From 1994 to 1998, he was chairman of the National Labor Relations Board under President Clinton.

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