Oh Boy! An Impromptu Physics Lecture!!
The discriptions offered so far are, in fact, for the most part accurate. However, there are a few points to clear up. First, light always travels at the speed of light. It never stops, or slows down (except for some special cases at the quantum level where photons can have speeds both greater than and less than the speed of light, but that gets a bit more complicated than what we want to worry about here). The reason that light appears to go more slowly in a powerful gravity well (i.e. near a black hole) is due to what is called the Lorentz contraction of space-time.
Now, we all know the story of the person that travels away from Earth near the speed of light, then travels back. The traveler only experiences one day of time but on Earth 100 years has gone by, right? Well, from the perspective of the traveler, it was the Earth that traveled away at near the speed of light. So, why didn't time travel the opposite, 100 years for the traveler and 1 day for Earth? The answer is that the funny stuff happens during acceleration, not when traveling so fast. So, it's when the traveler accelerates to near the speed of light, then accelerates back the other direction, and finally slows down again that the time inconsistencies develop.
Now, what does this have to do with black holes and the appearance of light traveling so slow? Well, this effect is present
anytime something is accelerating, even when that acceleration is due to gravity. So, when light is in a powerful gravity field, time is dilated thus, from our perspective, the light seems to move more slowly, while, in fact, from its point of view it's still moving just as fast as ever.
Okay, end of lecture for the moment....
