Black Scholar’s Research Published : New Look at ‘Underground Railroad’

PHILADELPHIA —  After nearly two decades of research and interviews, a black history author has given life to long-dead slaves and abolitionists in a new book that uses first-person narratives to convey the danger, excitement, tragedy and triumph of the Underground Railroad.

“I realized that although there were various books on the Underground Railroad, no one had ever brought out the narratives of the people, whether they were the passengers who were slaves or the conductors, the agents who were involved,” said Charles Blockson, curator of the Blockson Afro-American Historical Collection at Temple University.

Publication of Blockson’s “The Underground Railroad: First-Person Narratives of Escapes to Freedom in the North,” is particularly timely because the Underground Railroad was begun 150 years ago this year.

“The Underground Railroad is an American epic. It excites people from ages 9 to 90 because it had all the ingredients of a James Bond film. You had all kinds of people involved . . . women, children, black spies, white spies,” he said.

Many of the stories in the book came from slave narratives and abolitionist journals that have been out of print for years, he said.

“The stories are more poignant . . . because they were eyewitnesses to slavery,” said Blockson. “Historians and sociologists and psychologists have a tendency to interpret . . . and sometimes the interpretation is wrong.”

The history of the Underground Railroad is recalled in the pages of Blockson’s book through the narratives of such well-known people as John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and Levi Coffin.

But it also relives the experiences of others who were previously unknown, such as Henry (Box) Brown, who nailed himself inside a packing crate and had himself shipped from Richmond, Va., to Philadelphia.

The escape of William and Ellen Craft, who were slaves in Georgia, was widely heralded at the time, Blockson said. Their story details how Ellen, a fair-skinned slave, disguised herself as a young planter and traveled to Philadelphia with her husband, William, as her slave.

And the book recounts the tragic story of a fugitive Delaware slave, Margaret Garner, who killed her youngest daughter with a butcher knife so she wouldn’t be returned to slavery.

Blockson described the book as “a reminder of a missing element of American history.”

Beyond the excitement and danger, the book offers truths still relevant 123 years after slavery was abolished in the United States, Blockson said.

“Some of the narratives of people remind you of the civil rights movement of the ‘60s. The same type of element is there among the people that came together against bigotry,” he said.

Blockson says he hopes the book will dispel the notion that abolitionists were the main force behind the Underground Railroad and that fugitive slaves were largely helpless without them.

“Slaves did not sit passively waiting to be led out of slavery,” Blockson wrote in the book’s introduction. “Once free, they often reached back to help others escape to freedom. Black courage and perseverance, along with the spirited and sympathetic help of whites, brought many men, women and children out of slavery.”

Blockson says he hopes that in recalling a tragic part of history, the book will help prevent slavery from happening again.

“It is said that history always repeats itself,” he said. “Some of the same elements of life that appeared in those days--greed, suspicion, hatred, jealousy, bigotry--are occurring today.

“Perhaps for some who read the book, it could be a conduit for racial harmony or understanding. Because you still have poverty today, you still have bigotry, you still have places where people cannot move. There’s discrimination . . . you still have greed. It hasn’t really changed.”