Transcripts For CSPAN3 Teaching Underground Railroad History

Gentleman. [inaudible] he served as president of the ional underGround Railroad National Underground Railroad Freedom center for six years and worked at the National Museum of American History for 20. Exhibitionportant was the groundbreaking feel to factory field to factory. It generated a National Discussion on migration, race. He also cocurated the american presidency, a glorious burden. The National Underground Railroad Freedom center has attracted worldwide attention because of the quality of its presentation and focus on race, interracial cooperation, and issues of contemporary slavery. He has published extensively in the areas of public history. He coauthored the american presidency, unchanged unchanged memories unchanged memories. He has served on many boards. He is the pastor of the National Council for History Education the past chair of the National Council for History Education. He has been selected to the organization of american historians distinguished lecture symposium. He graduated from Brown University and holds a masters degree in a doctorate degree from rutgers university. [applause] he holds the chair of Civil War History at Dickinson College and serves as the director of the house divided project. An effort to build digital resources on the civil war era. Held visitingsly fellowships at the strategic studies at the u. S. Army war college and the National Constitution center in philadelphia. He is the author of two books. And lincolnoln sanctuary. ,is next book is forthcoming candidly titled understanding abraham lincolns partisan leadership. He has also published widely on the underGround Railroad and various topics. Contribute into the journal of American History and several academic journals as well as the baltimoreh as sun, los angeles times, philadelphia inquirer, and usa today. He appears regularly on tv channels such as cspan at a any e. A an he currently serves the organization of american historians as a distinguished lecturer. He sits on the Advisory Boards of several historic organizations such as fords theater society, the gettysburg foundation, the National Civil war museum, and president lincolns cottage of the soldiers home. He graduated from Harvard College and received a doctorate in philosophy degree in modern history from the university of oxford. [applause] dr. Timothy wescott is an associate professor of history at park university. His research is focused on numerous regional subjects. He has presented numerous public presentations and conference papers. He is completing work on a biography of george creel and publishing his doctoral dissertation on the underGround Railroad. He coedited a recent publication, 140 years of pioneering education, the study of park university. Exhibits. Ated two he has received Numerous University in teaching awards, including the department of defense award. Serves on the organization missouri conference on the history steering committee, and a board member. Dr. Wescott graduated from the university of missouri kansas city and received his doctoral degree from the Union Institute and university in cincinnati, ohio. [applause] welcome. I want to thank jonathan, alexander, and mark for those introductions. I want to express my gratitude to the National Archives staff, University Colleagues University Colleagues, and cspan 3 staff for recording the discussions, and for you for attending. The subject of the underGround Railroad is always exciting and engaging. A macree of us will bring crew a macro view of the subject but also some micro perspectives. About 3040peak minutes, at which time we will be pleased to answer questions. The microphone is there in the center. Cspan would appreciate audience members to use the microphones when posing questions. You have researched wide topics in africanAmerican History. What brought you to focus on the perspectives related to the underGround Railroad . What got me interested, i began working at the Freedom Center in cincinnati and i trained as urban migration. I was attracted to the Freedom Center because of the topic area and because of the focus on individuals being able to make a change on society. The fact that the story is a very powerful one, a very inspiring one. I came to the underGround Railroad as a teacher. I had difficulty teaching underGround Railroad in the classroom. I think a lot of us do. And then i discovered the reason why it was elusive was because we had been ignoring a lot of the records. To benefit from being a teacher in the age of the digital revolution and was able to gain access to a lot of the , legal cases, newspapers. I was able to put it together in a way that made sense to me and i began training other teachers, k12 educators across the country. That is how spencer and i met years ago. The way we teach the underGround Railroad has been revolutionized in the last 20 years and im trying to contribute to that. Your point about digitalization is important, where resources become more available. Topicsess one of the is the new dimensions and perspectives and the digitalization and availability of those records. When we started, we had to go through the archives. Not students, now we do need to do that necessarily. Looking toward the future, how important is technology in the continued evolution of the technology in telling that . Tory it depends on how you are focusing your research and who you are looking at in terms of the story. [inaudible] it depends on how you are focusing your emphasis. What i have found is if you are interested in the unspoken be anduals, that tends to underground, get your hands dirty into the archives sort of thing. If you are trying to learn about if you are looking at newspapers and the more public areas, digitalization makes a big difference. It depends on how you are beginning to look at this. In and around the area of Northern Virginia and that is not digitized. You have to go down to the local historical societies. Since we are in the archives, archives always matter. No one wants to get rid of archives. The phrase underGround Railroad is a metaphor used by propagandists on either side, but especially antislavery activists. It was used to popularize what they were doing. You could use digital surfaces and database to uncover the first usages of that term or variations. Eighthgraders could do that. It is really kind of remarkable. High School Students and College Students can do this almost as effectively with the tools that are in front of them. I have access from my desktop to reimbursement letters that agent sent for Harriet Tubman when she wore out the shoes on her escapes from maryland through pennsylvania. You can chart her passageway from the Eastern Shore of maryland to philadelphia to new york through different records that have been discovered. A collection of records used in a book that was just published a year ago that documents one of Harriet Tubmans escapes with one of her brothers. Remarkable story that was not accessible before. Any student can see it. Not just hear about it but see the documents. The subject of the underGround Railroad is surrounded by myth and mystery. Maybe that is what is intriguing about it. Diffused the myth and historical accuracy regarding studying the underGround Railroad . I will lay something out there that might provoke some people in the room. We all have our attitudes and ideas about what is true and what is not. I focus on documents. Committee records, legal records, and this paper records. Many people believe in certain folklore. Code or song code. I can tell you from where i sit that almost all of the stories seem to be invented in the 20th century. They do not even come from 19 century. Quil codest, for example, i do not find any instances of them in my research. I do not think any working historian i know of has documented them. I know teachers who teach it. Same with songs. To a degree, same thing is true about the passageways and tunnels. Obviously, there were hiding places. Most of those stories are modernday folklore trying to explain how the tiger got his spots in a way that does not reflect the reality of the escapes in the 19 century. I would agree with that. What i find most interesting, the whole concept of the underGround Railroad is not a railroad that was underground. It is a metaphor for a system of trying to help people gain their freedom. The other is, if you talk to different communities, everyone believes that their ancestor was a part of the underGround Railroad and there had a sad a passageway and their house had a passageway. I think those sort of myths are interesting. Read thestudents autograph the autobiography of levi coffin. The fact that a lot of people after the war decided they were connected to the underGround Railroad, they were a participant. It is beginning to decipher who was actually part of this versus those who are johnnycomelatelys. Me, i thinkrt for that if i, the sense had lived then, i would have been a part of this. I would have stepped forward. Eating people to understand the challenges getting people to understand the challenges that go with us and how hard it was for those how hard those choices are for people to make. Unwrap the story, the human side of it. So they have a better sense of what was involved in being a part of the underGround Railroad. One of the questions i ask, what is the most important part of the underGround Railroad . All these interesting answers. Loyalty, bravery. Well, what you really need to have, enslaved people willing to run away. Not is often a part that is emphasized enough. Risk,reedom is worth the and that is a major decision. These are almost like two different subjects. About 20 years ago, there was a really good book called runaway slaves. , afterlked about Extensive Research and plantation records, they estimate 100,000 slaves runaway each year but not to the north or to canada or mexico. Temporary escapes come up special escapes. They focused on that. Escapes, special escapes partial escapes. They focused on that. I feel like the subject of the underGround Railroad is about the people who helped them. Obviously, you cannot have one without the other. There is a huge story of runaway and that is only partially related to what we think of as the underGround Railroad. And i know they overlap but it ofalmost like a venn diagram topics and i do not be think people often understand that. Right,ink you are understanding the underGround Railroad as it manifests itself in the north is in an part of the story. But how are these individuals getting from these plantations to the north . They have to get their. Sometimes it is on their own and sometimes there are others that help them along the way. System of enslaved people helping other enslaved people gain their freedom. Ohio, i example is in forgot the name of the whovidual, and enslaved man brought people across the ohio river to freedom and then went back to enslavement. One of the key people helping was called sam the slave who find outk to people to their status. I agree, if we think about the underGround Railroad in terms of connecting to individuals to help them, that is important. We still have a lot to learn about what is that system that operates in the south. When i was one of our researchers did some Interesting Research in which he ran across an incident of Union Soldiers who had been imprisoned there and escaped and made their way north to ohio. What they wrote about was the fact that they were able to make the escape is because they connected to enslaved people along the way who provided them with shelter and food. I do not know how well organized that is, but there is Something Else going on here in the south. It is part of what garrett talked about. For him, the underGround Railroad mythology had to do with what is going on in the north. But there is a lot more for us to figure out. I have some colleagues in new news who have looked at the new news who have looked at william stills writing in terms of what happened in the area. You read Henry Box Brown, there is an underground Railroad System operating enrichment. There were two or three people who had done this before with suggestions on how to move forward. There is lots more for us to learn, especially the Southern Side of it is a great place for greater research. Those,ng from both of continue tould we study the south, but i would advocate when need to study [indiscernible] storiessome of our could amplify out here because most of our persons of color come from the south. There is a dissertation that needs to get published. [laughter] i start my presentations and whenl ask the question we get to the end of this, i will ask you a question. Would you be willing to risk, you personally, your life, your property, your wife, your someone you dode not know . We can sit here and say yes. When you really have to think about losing all of that, i always come back to that question at the end. It is amazing, well, i really dont know. But, there is a difference in the risks people took in slave states and free states. There were more people who spent more time in jail in kentucky entiresouri that in the north after the fugitive law. I can only name a handful of people who were actually prosecuted under the 1850 law. Sentence the longest i can think of was three months. One sentence was an hour. One man in chicago was sentenced to a week in prison but they let him out every night to have dinner. [laughter] that is for real. That did not happen in missouri. That did not happen in kentucky with some of the people helping the ohiocape across river. One man sent spent 17 years in prison. People were tortured in florida or virginia. When Henry Box Brown escaped, nobody in philadelphia went to jail. The people in richmond who got caught, one man spent nearly 17 years in jail. There is a river that separates we have an imaginary line. We call it stateline road now. [indiscernible] interesting how, we had no natural barrier for escape. This is why it matters. The underGround Railroad, we usually only think about federal laws. The law that really applied was state law. Personal liberty log in the north. If you do not understand state laws, you cannot understand the underGround Railroad. The thing about slavery and escape is the law. Very few people know it. That is what we have to do a better job of teaching. Both of you have mentioned Larry Garrett. 1961. I will google it later. Masters, escaping persons of color were engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience. How do academic and public sitorians infuse the mid19 19 century nonviolent disobedience to teach about the underGround Railroad . You start with that. [laughter] that is a big one. What you find most effective with students, start with a place they are more familiar with and carry them back into that. You begin talking about how it operates, and begin to think about how that operates what kind of commitment it calls for and how it may affect your life. Allow them to carry that back to get a better sense of pastime. As we talked about before, i think nonviolent is a part of what happens in the underGround Railroad but it is not covering the full spectrum of things taking place. Fairbanks ut John Fairfield is a kentuckian or virginia, i forget. He decides he will go south and bring enslaved people out and if violence is part of what has to happen, so be it. Part of the nonviolent side of it comes with the connection of the quakers. They were nonviolent and preached against it. If you begin to look at it in terms of the south, they are going to protect themselves. Commitment tos a the idea of helping those trying to gain freedom. They would prefer nonviolent. But they will not stay away from confrontation. It is a matter of having people understand the complexity of it and not to think of it in just one term or another. There are variations on a theme. That is how i begin to think of this issue of nonviolent activism. I would