Meetinghouse Street Church, organized as a Baptist Church and at that time led by Rev. Jeremiah Ashur, then the African Union Meeting and Schoolhouse. He was invited "to officiate for him one Sunday morning, as he knew I was accustomed to exhort when in Boston." He took up work as a stone mason and had his family join him in Providence. He then operated a canal boat from Providence to Woonsocket. During one of the canal runs he was seriously injured when a horse stumbled, fell upon him and slashed his face. He was brought home to his ill, pregnant wife. Unable to work, members of the community, including President Wayland, brought food to the family while he recovered. Nantucket After his accident, Black was determined to become a preacher. He traveled to Nantucket with a letter of recommendation from two Providence preachers for Deacon Berry. He preached at the York Street Baptist Church for several weeks. Novel or slave narrative In 1847 called The Life and Sufferings of Leonard Black: A Fugitive from Slavery. He wrote the book to inform Christians of what slavery was like in hopes of ending slavery which would free his fourth brother and earn enough money to pursue religious studies. His autobiography includes a poem entitled The Traveling Pilgrim and an essay on slavery. Of slavery he began: The slaves are taught ignorance as we teach our children knowledge. They are kept in darkness, and are borne down under a cruel, cruel oppression! All human rights are denied them as citizens! They are not recognized as men! My old master frequently said, "he did not believe a d--d nigger had any soul!" They are made to undergo everything as a beast. Having a full, perfect, undeniable right to stand out before God as MEN, the cruel, God-defying white man, without semblance of right, with no pretence [sic] but might, has prostituted them to the base purpose of his cupidity, and his baser beastly passions, reducing them to mere things, mere chattels, to be bought and sold like hogs and sheep! Born, like the white man, to an individual responsibility to the Father of mercies, the treatment of the white man to the poor African, unmixed with mercy, has curtained his mind to all knowledge, aye, even to the knowledge of the God of heaven and earth, and thus removed from him the accountability! But,