There are people of humble origins who make a devastating impact on world opinion, but their deeds are often forgotten, in the main, even when they caused controversy, in their day.

One such person was called "The most controversial former slave ever to make his way to freedom," and he appeared first in England one hundred and fifty years ago. The event was called the "Great Exhibition," and it was held in Hyde Park, London. Over six million people attended to view exhibits and goods from nations around the world. It was largest event of its kind ever held in the world, up to then.

This wasn't where the story of Josiah Henson really began, but it was the beginning of it's finally coming to light.

On March 5, 1877, Josiah Henson, a man whom Queen Victoria had known of and had wanted to meet in person for many years, after accepting her invitation to an audience, finally signed the visitor's book at Windsor Castle. Yet the Queen did not immediately recall her FIRST meeting with this unique character.

He had been the only black exhibitor, one of the Canadian representatives, when The Great Exhibition had opened twenty-six years earlier on May 1, 1851.

Queen Victoria had always been special to those, like Henson, who had been slaves, partly due to her response to the U.S. fugitive slave laws of 1850, which had been: "As slavery cannot exist on British soil, no runaway who reachs Canada would ever be returned south."

It was perhaps the combination of his being black, and his experiences as a slave that attracted attention to him, especially as the English press of the time tended to categorize America as an uncouth and uncivilized nation of slave traders. That a man could escape and do well enough to help shape the destiny of others made him something of a celebrity.

During the run of the exhibition, through contacts within the church, Henson was asked to speak at many venues about the plight of his fellows still suffering enslavement in the southern United States. He met the then Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, and, when asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury which university he had attended, he answered, quite simply, "The University of adversity."

"Where is that?" came the archbishop's reply

"It was my lot to be born a slave. I never entered school, or read the Bible in my youth, and I received all my training under the most adverse circumstances" Henson said. He returned to Canada at the end of 1851, having been awarded a bronze medal for the quality of his craftsmanship.

When Harriet Beecher-Stowe published "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in 1852, the book met with tremendous acclaim around the world. Within a few months, there were five different stage versions playing in London, but it was condemned by U.S. authorities who felt obliged to challenge its authenticity. To prove the solidity of her background information, the authoress released details of her sources.

One in particular was this same Josiah Henson, whom she met in Boston, and on whose own harrowing tale of slavery - his "The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself", published in 1849 - much of her own book was to be based. Henson is reputed to have said "Mrs Stowe's book is not an exaggerated account of the evils of slavery. The truth has never been half told; the story would be too horrible to hear."

His own story is a tribute to his heroic determination to find freedom, his skill, and his later success. He was born on June 15th, 1789, in Charles County, Maryland, growing up in a culture of mindless violence to his own kind, yet refusing to be downtrodden.

He once watched his own father having his ear cut off, after having received a hundred lashes, before being sold off to a plantation owner. Then his father was "sold south" - a terrifying fate to all slaves - and Josiah never saw him again. His crime? Preventing the rape of his wife by a white overseer. For a black man to even touch a white man was unheard of - to assault one could easily have led to execution.

Henson himself had been bought and sold three times before his 18th birthday, having been ripped from the arms of his mother at only six. Their owner, a Doctor, had passed away, and as "property" of the estate, the family was sold off, one by one, to different buyers.

It is impossible, without reading Henson's autobiography, or Beecher-Stowe's novel, to fully appreciate just how miserable the life of a slave really was. These were people without rights, treated as animals because that's how their owners saw them - livestock for breeding, buying and selling - yet Henson rose above the utter hopelessness of his existence, a shining example to others in his position.

His strength came partly from the faith in God he had acquired from Methodist preachers, at a time when religion and literacy were denied to slaves, and also to his belief in the right of a black man to live on equal terms with white men. Having once already been cheated of the right to buy his freedom for $350 - which he'd worked hard to save - he discovered that his owner, Amos Riley, had secret plans to sell him on.

This would mean separation, yet again, from his family, an ordeal that Josiah was determined never to repeat, so he made plans to escape. Later, in 1830, he took his whole family on a dangerous trek northwards, evaded capture, and finally crossed the frontier into Canada at Buffalo.

As a "free nigger," Henson wrote that he celebrated "with a frenzy of joy on reaching Canada," though he did, later, return to the U.S. to lead another group of fugitives to safety. The Hensons settled in Ontario, where he became a farm laborer for three years, learning to read and write before becoming a lay preacher - and Father Henson.

He believed that it must be possible to create a self-sustaining colony, and, as leader of his fugitive slave group, he set one up at Dawn, Ontario soon after. It was an industrial project, with a sawmill and a technical school, but it struggled financially due to both limited capital and markets for their work.

This was why, at sixty years of age, Henson took it upon himself to go and exhibit at the Great Exibition, of which he wrote - "Perhaps my complexion attracted attention, but nearly all who passed paused to look at me and at themselves as reflected in my large black walnut mirrors."

This was where Queen Victoria had first met him, pausing to admire his work and speaking to him, briefly. Her interest in the abolition of slavery, and in the endless reports of Henson's campaigning speeches across Canada and the U.S.A, were finally rewarded in 1865 when Amendment XIII of the American Constitution abolished slavery forever.

This is the unsung heroism of Josiah Henson, selflessly devoting his "free" life to the freedom of his peers, and refusing to go quietly into retirement. In 1879, at age eighty, he said of "Uncle Tom's Cabin", "From 1852 to the present, I have been called Uncle Tom, and I feel proud of the title. If my humble words in any way inspired that gifted lady to write such a plaintive story, I have not lived in vain; for I believe that her book was the beginning of the glorious end."

Father Henson was eighty-seven when he decided to embark on a last fundraising tour. It was over forty years after his escape from the inhumanity of slavery. English friends and supporters, too many to count, told audiences nationwide of his "sense of liberty, love of freedom, manliness of feeling and independence of mind, joined to a degree of firmness, perseverance and determination not exceeded by either Cromwell or Wellington."

His audiences were always big and enthusiastic, and it was no surprise that the Queen was so eager to meet him. This meeting was immortalized in a water-colour painting by Francis Walker, and a portrait bust of Henson by W. Charles May, today exhibited in the American Museum in Bath.

It was late in life that this indefatigable freedom fighter finally received the accolades he had so richly earned, having lived to fulfill the destiny he had so often dreamed of as a young man - but he was defiant, right to the end. He said, "People have forgotten that Mrs. Stowe's book is a novel. My name is not Tom and never was. I do not want to have any other name inserted in the newspapers for me than my own. Josiah Henson. Always was, always will be."

Josiah Henson passed away in 1883, at the age of ninety-four, having lived an early life that few of those alive today would wish to emulate. He suffered terrible emotional and physical abuse as a child and a young man, but managed, nonetheless, to rise above it all and set an example to us all, playing a truly major part in the abolition of slavery.

Humble beginnings, to be sure, leading to a lifelong fight for justice, the like of which is so rarely seen in the pages of history, and for which we owe him a debt of gratitude. This was, without doubt, a man whose unshakeable belief in justice helped to alter the course of history. Josiah Henson - Uncle Tom - the freedom fighter who wouldn't be beaten. 150 years on, he deserves to be remembered.