Book GISTOFFREEDOMFINAL

The Journal of the Civil War Era, 2015

'THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD' by COLSON WHITEHEAD, 2016

Publisher: Doubleday Publishing Company (First Edition); Published: 2016; ISBN13: 978-0385542364; ISBN-10: 0385542364; pp 320; Price: $15.41. http://bordersliteratureonline.net/books/The-Underground-Railroad The historic Underground Railroad of America which made legends of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass was not located underground nor was it a railroad. A loose organised network with no clear, defined routes, the word underground relays the secrecy of the network's activities and the fear of exposure of slaves fleeing the hell of the confederate states. In his fictional interpretation of The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead keeps faith with recorded history in important ways even pasting as visual props and as prefaces to chapters, notices about runaway slaves with slave profiles and specifics about rewards for their capture. Rampaging the book's pages are the hordes of feral patrollers and slave catchers he unleashes, their blood singing as they go nigger hunting.

Indiana Magazine of History, 2002

The Underground Railroad in southern Indiana is often believed to have been a system run by white abolitionists, in which AfXcan Americans played a minor role. Furthermore, given the secret and dangerous nature of its work, little evidence about it is presumed to have survived. To dispel these and other errors, Pamela R. Peters uncovers a complex web of information surrounding the workings of the Underground Railroad in Floyd County, Indiana. While Peters is careful not to overstate her findings, she brings new understanding to this greatest of all American liberation movements. Floyd County was well situated as a gateway t o freedom for slaves escaping across the Ohio River, since New Albany, the county seat, was directly across from Louisville. That city was "the largest Southern city bordering the Ohio River" (p. 5) and, equally important, a major slave-trading center. Despite the risks, Floyd County residents, especially free African Americans, found ways to help fugitive slaves. Located in secluded rural areas and in neighborhoods of New Albany that were near the Ohio River, African Americans' homes offered shelter and safety from slave catchers eager for cash rewards. Free blacks who worked on Ohio River steamboats and on the Salem-New Albany Railroad found frequent opportunities to aid fugitives. Furthermore, family members, churches, businesses, and Free Mason lodges connected Floyd County African Americans to networks in Louisville and to places farther north. Using a combination of written records and oral histories, Peters demonstrates that the free African Americans were "the backbone of the Underground Railroad in the New Albany-Floyd County area" (p. 59). Among white Floyd County residents, New School Presbyterians and Wesleyan Methodists were well known for their condemnation of slavery. The Presbyterian New Albany Theological Seminary "became synonymous with abolitionism" (p. 52). Such convictions, Peters contends, linked ministers and church members to the Underground Railroad. Peters raises the intriguing possibility that James Brooks, an elder of New Albany's Second Presbyterian Church, used his position as president of the New Albany-Salem Railroad to issue free train passes to slaves fleeing north. Since this railroad was a reputed route for fugitive slaves and Brooks "was known for helping the poor," (p. 49) it seems all the more likely that he was active in the Underground Railroad. Peters also finds oral traditions within Floyd County's African American community that tie German immigrants in New Albany to the work.

This essay is about Philadelphia's contribution to freedom movement in mid-1800s. The Underground Railroad was a secret network established by former fugitives and abolitionists in order to assist slaves escape from Southern captivity. Supported by sympathizers, but mainly by free blacks, the informal organization helped former slaves to re-locate in Northern states and even reach Canada in order to start new lives. As the Underground Railroad gained more supporters among Quakers, and sympathizers, hundreds of runaways headed toward Philadelphia either to stay or continue their flight toward Canada. However the major support for the success and continuity of the network came from wealthy Black Philadelphians, including James Forten and Robert Purvis.

Linguistics and Education, 2006

Kitwana, B. (2002). The hip hop generation: Young Blacks and the crisis in African American culture (1st ed.). New York: Basic Civitas.

Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage, 2019

Originally situated in a suburb, today the 1856 Gray House is a private residence and part of Chicago's Old Irving Park neighbourhood. Known for his vocal stand against slavery, John Gray was the first Republican Sheriff of Cook County (1858–1860). In the years after his death, popular narratives arose designating his home a station on the Underground Railroad. By interrogating the documentary record, results from archaeological survey and excavation, and reports from known Underground Railroad sites, this paper focuses on the way that stories of the Underground Railroad are a preferred narrative of uplift and resistance even with absent site-specific evidence for these antislavery activities.

Indiana Magazine of History, 2020

Abstract : The history of the Underground Railroad has long been marked by contentious debate. Surviving evidence from Jefferson County, Indiana, sheds new light on the day-to- day operations of the Underground Railroad in southeastern Indiana and the Ohio River border region. Historian J. Michael Raley examines the complex interracial network of fugitive slaves, their enslaved and free black families and friends, the free black residents of the Georgetown community in Madison, Indiana, and white abolitionists from area churches and antislavery societies. Their efforts were not without risk. In aiding runaway slaves in their flight northward, people of color secretly collaborated with trusted whites at grave peril to themselves and their families, and despite all efforts, fugitives from slavery far too often were recaptured in route. For those who succeeded in reaching Canada as well as for those who aided them, however, the potential dangers were always more than worth the risk.

NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 2023

This article radically reframes Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady in relation to the Underground Railroad, the transatlantic slave trade, US slavery, and racial housing segregation. Focusing on the house in Albany, New York, where Isabel Archer stays in the 1850s, it asserts that Isabel's pursuit of freedom is grounded in her 1850s childhood when the Underground Railroad was particularly active in Albany. It examines the Albany home within the historical context of the 1870s and 1880s, when, respectively, Isabel returns to Albany and The Portrait of a Lady was first published. Taking into account the Supreme Court's 1883 Civil Rights Cases, which facilitated housing discrimination against Black Americans, this article argues that the Albany home, whose door remains bolted to the “vulgar street,” protects James's American lady from a vulgarity associated then with African Americans. By examining a critically overlooked function of the Albany house—its spatial representation of the novel's plot—this article shows how narratives of Black people escaping slavery along with late nineteenth‐century definitions of vulgarity centrally define Isabel's pursuit of freedom. Analyzing the plot's architecture, the article reveals how James strategically alludes to two novels about racism—overtly to George Eliot's Daniel Deronda and covertly to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin—to construct his highly influential narrative about a white woman's transatlantic journey toward freedom.

Palimpsest, 2004