On September 21, 1862, William Benjamin Gould, a slave in Wilmington, NC, set off in a small boat on a daring flight to freedom duringthe Civil War. The 150th
anniversary of this great escape will be celebrated by Gould’s descendant, Prof. William B. Gould IV, in a talk on September 23 at 3 pm at the Church of
the Good Shepherd in Oakdale Square, Dedham.
The first William B. Gould and his companions were picked up the morning after their escape by a U.S. Navy ship off the coast of North Carolina. Gould joined the Navy and began a diary that was discovered almost a
century later in an attic in Dedham, where Gould settled after the Civil War. Gould was a founder of the Church of the Good Shepherd where his great-grandson will
speak. A mason and master plasterer, Gould helped to build St. Mary’s Church in Dedham. He joined the Charles W. Carroll Post #144 of the Grand Army of the Republic in 1882 and later served as its commander.
William Benjamin Gould IV, professor emeritus at Stanford Law School, published his ancestor’sCivil War diary in 2002 as “Diary of a Contraband: The Civil War Passage of a
Black Sailor.” (“Contraband” was a Civil War term used for escaped slaves.) He will read from the diary during his lecture.
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Prof. Gould, a scholar of labor law, served as chairman of the National Labor Relations Board under President Clinton. He is the author of several books, including “Bargaining with Baseball: Labor Relations in an Age of Prosperous Turmoil” based on his role in resolving the 1994-95 baseball strike. He is an avid Red Sox
fan.
Prof. Gould’s talk on Sept. 23 is co-sponsored by the Church of the Good Shepherd and the Dedham
Historical Society. Admission is free. For more information, please contact Angela McConney Scheepers, Church of the Good Shepherd, at 617-378-8106; or Vicky Kruckeberg at the Dedham Historical Society,
781-326-1385.
