Enslaved peoples found various ways to protest: by learning to read and write, sabotaging production, rebelling against slave-owners, or running away to freedom. One way this occurred was through the Underground Railroad, a network of safe houses leading north toward free states and Canada. Harriet Tubman, a conductor on the Underground Railroad, made 13 trips back to the South and aided approximately 70 enslaved people to freedom.

In the Caribbean, enslaved Africans would escape and form independent maroon communities, such as Accompong Town in Jamaica, which still exists today.