Lewis Sheridan Leary was born free on March 17, 1835, in North Carolina—a rare privilege for a Black man at the time. But that freedom came with harsh realities. As he grew up, Lewis realized that freedom on paper did not shield him from a society where people with his skin color were still treated as property. Despite his relatively privileged upbringing, he was deeply moved by the suffering of enslaved people and made it his mission to fight for justice.

His journey began through a friendship with Luke, a slave who worked on his family’s land. That relationship changed Lewis's worldview, ultimately leading him to leave the South and move to Oberlin, Ohio—a hub for abolitionist activity and home to the Anti-Slavery movement. There, alongside his best friend John Copeland, Lewis joined the fight for freedom as an Underground Railroad conductor, risking everything to help enslaved people escape to safety.

Still, Lewis felt called to do more. That calling intensified after he met John Brown, the radical abolitionist who believed in confronting slavery head-on. Lewis joined Brown’s fateful raid on Harpers Ferry, stepping into a defining moment in American history—one that lit the spark for the Civil War.