John Sella Martin (September 27, 1832 – August 11, 1876) escaped slavery in Alabama and became an influential abolitionist and pastor in Boston, Massachusetts. He was an activist for equality before the American Civil War and travelled to England to lecture against slavery. When he returned, he preached in Presbyterian churches in Washington, D.C.

Under the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, adopted by Virginia in 1662 and later other colonies in slave law, children of slave mothers took her status and were born into slavery, regardless of who their father was and what proportion of European ancestry they had.

At the age of six, Martin along with his mother and his sister Caroline, were sold to a slave trader who took them to Columbus, Georgia. There they were sold to a medical doctor and owned them for three years until bankruptcy forced him to sell his slaves and break up Martin’s family.

Martin’s mother Winnifred was sold to an Alabama minister, his sister was sold to a Mobile, Alabama slaveholder, and John, now nine, remained in Columbus with another slaveholder.
Martin would never see his relatives again.

He later described the coffle in which he and his sister were forced to march from North Carolina to Georgia.
“A long row of men chained two-and-two together, called a “coffle” and numbering about 30 persons, was the first to march forth from the “pen,” then came the quiet slaves – that is, those who were tame and degraded – then came the unmarried women, or those without children; after these came the children who were able to walk; and following them came mothers with their infants and young children in their arms.”
The Rev. J. Sella Martin

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After the American Civil War, Martin returned to the South, working during the Reconstruction era in education in Alabama and Mississippi. A Republican, he became a politician in Louisiana and in 1872 was elected to the state legislature from Caddo Parish.

In that year, the gubernatorial election was fiercely disputed, and the state legislature was ultimately taken over by the Democrats, en route to regaining control of the state government. Martin had an appointed position with the US Post Office and also wrote for the Louisianian newspaper.

NOTE: there are different accounts concerning who bought John Stella Martin. Some accounts say it was a Free Black man, who also taught him to read and write.
Other accounts say that he was bought by a White man and there were different White children who taught him to read and write.
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Martin first learned of free Blacks from the gamblers who frequented the hotel where he worked. He also learned to read from a white boy who broke Georgia law prohibiting the practice. When he learned that his mother was visiting Columbus with her owner, Martin attempted to see her but was caught and jailed for seven months.

Ironically it was in jail that he met another white prisoner who taught him grammar, history, arithmetic, and provided information about the North and Canada. Martin was returned to his owner who promised in his will to free the boy on his 18th birthday.

Other family members challenged the will upon the owner’s death and gained control of Martin who was sold off to various owners roughly a dozen times more while he worked as a cabin boy on steamboats across the South.

Finally Martin escaped slavery by forging freedom papers and arrived in Chicago, Illinois on January 6, 1856. Once safe from slavery he began his efforts to end the institution, making speeches with what one observer called his “surprising eloquence and earnest appeals for the liberation of the slave.”

Teaming with H. Ford Douglas, a fugitive slave from Virginia who was also on the abolitionist lecture circuit, Martin arrived in Detroit, Michigan in 1857. Working with a Baptist minister who preached across the state, Martin joined the church and in 1858 was ordained. He then moved to Buffalo, New York where the 26 year old became the Rev. J. Sella Martin, minister of the predominantly white Michigan Street Baptist Church.

In 1858, Martin married Sarah Ann Lattimore of Saratoga Springs, New York. They had two children: a son, Horace, who died at the age of four months in April 1861, and a daughter, Josephine Sarah, born in Boston, March 9, 1863.

After Martin's death, Sarah Ann Martin moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked as a teacher. In 1884, both Sarah and her daughter Josie were witnesses at the wedding of Frederick Douglass and his second wife Helen Pitts Douglass Josie, who had also worked in the District as a teacher, on December 27, 1883, married barber Cyrus Fabius Martin (no relation), a Civil War veteran from Dowagiac, Michigan. They would eventually have four children.

Sarah Ann Martin died in Washington on May 26, 1891. Josephine Sarah Martin divorced her husband in 1909, and with her youngest daughter moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she married Dr. Graham Sharp, a chiropodist.
They subsequently moved to Los Angeles, California, where she died on October 18, 1947

In April 1859 Rev. Martin moved from Michigan Street Baptist Church to Boston where he became the first black pastor of Tremont Temple. He briefly led another mostly white Baptist congregation in Lawrence, Massachusetts before moving in 1860 to Joy Street Baptist Church, the oldest black church in Boston.

Martin remained there until 1863 when he became a representative of the American Missionary Association (AMA). With AMA sponsorship Martin worked mostly in the South promoting Reconstruction. For undisclosed reasons he left the AMA and the ministry in 1873.

J. Sella Martin died in New Orleans, Louisiana on August 11, 1876. Although he had been battling a chronic illness, his death was ruled a suicide. He was 44 years old.
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Sources: Wikipedia; Blackpast; The Massachusetts Historical Society