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Traveling from the U. S. Going to Canada is now a matter of recreation for many of us.
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The biggest challenge might be a traffic jam on one of the cross-border bridges, or a long wait beside the baggage carousel at Pearson airport.
But as recently as the early 1860s, for other people with ebony skin, it was a question of continued freedom or slavery.
From 1793, when the legislature of Upper Canada (now Ontario) passed a law prohibiting any new users from being enslaved, to 1865, when slavery was outlawed throughout the United States, black men and women sought to escape slavery by reaching Niagara Falls. , Windsor, or other outdoor spaces in the United States
A primary means of escape known as the Underground Railroad: neither underground nor railroad, but a network of other people who helped slaves succeed in Upper Canada and other spaces where they could be free.
During our recent travels, my wife (Ruth) and I learned more about the situations slaves were trying to escape, as well as about the Underground Railroad itself.
Whether you’re traveling in February, Black History Month, or any other part of the year, these factors boost your education on the Underground Railroad:
Slaves were treated as people, but as goods that could simply be bought and sold.
“Families were torn apart when slaves were sold across the country, to the far reaches of the state, or ‘downstream’ to the cotton-producing states,” according to Erin Goins, who organizes food and historical tours in Lexington (bitesofthebluegrassArraycom).
“Human beings, locked in slave pens from 6 × 7, awaited the auction with terrible impatience, while the ‘elegant girls’ – the sex slaves – “were displayed as commodities. “
His midday look at what’s in Toronto and beyond.
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A domain of downtown Lexington known as Cheapside Park, the center of the slave industry in Kentucky in the 1840s. An ancient monument erected in the Commonwealth of Kentucky indicates that thousands of slaves were sold to Cheapside, including children separated from their parents.
In 2020, the domain name replaced Henry A. Tandy Centennial Park, named in honor of the black man whose company built the stone and brick masonry for the nearby courthouse.
Today, the Fifth Third Bank pavilion in the park is a much more cheerful place. This is an event area where you can eat, drink, and listen to live music on Thursday nights when the weather is nice or shop at the farmers market on Saturday mornings.
In Lexington, there are 3 self-guided walking tours committed to the area’s African American history.
In addition, the virtual multimedia task “Me here” allows those who have added the passport to their smartphone to learn more about the history of the city’s neighborhoods.
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is located on a hillside near the Ohio River, which separates Ohio from Kentucky.
“Kentucky was a slave state, Ohio was a free state by one vote,” explained Novella Nimmo, the centre’s educational outreach manager, who helped us learn more about the facility, its exhibits, and its purpose.
Outside the museum’s third floor is the Freedom’s Eternal Flame Terrace, from where you can look out past Cincinnati, and past the Ohio River, to see how close Kentucky is. Visitors on the terrace are invited to contemplate the enslavement activities of the past and the present, both of which are documented at the museum.
Looking back, “From Slavery to Freedom” offers the history of slavery in the Americas up to the Reconstruction era after the American Civil War. “The Slave Pen” is a two-story building that originally stood on a Kentucky farm and used to temporarily house slaves for sale. The chains on the walls, which were used to hold the slaves, provide a striking image.
Escape!” Gallery is a family-friendly exhibition that focuses on the Underground Railroad and the others involved in it.
Looking to the present, “Invisible: Slavery Today” examines how some other people are still enslaved, such as those who paint children or engage in prostitution, as well as today’s anti-slavery organizations.
The Freedom Center will mark its 20th anniversary in 2024.
One of the problems of the crossing into Canada in Detroit, known on the Underground Railroad as “Midnight”.
A very crude description of this passage is presented in two works of art, one on each side of the Detroit River.
In Detroit, the “Liberty Gate” statue shows a “driver” accompanying a group of people on the road to Canada. The statue is just above the city’s Riverwalk, south of downtown Hart Plaza.
In Windsor, the Freedom Tower Underground Railroad monument shows the arrival of other people in Canada, under a 6. 5-metre granite monolith. One of the other people, a young woman holding a rag doll, looks out at the United States. The monument is on 200 Pitt St. E. , about a block from the city’s riverfront.
A permanent exhibition at the Detroit Historical Museum is “Doorway to Freedom: Detroit and the Underground Railroad.” The first part of the exhibit mimics a trail leading to Detroit’s waterfront, which enslaved people would have followed. It includes the whispered testimony of Robert Cromwell, an enslaved man who escaped slavery through Detroit. The second part — a bright gallery space — evokes the freedom which Cromwell and others would have felt after crossing into Canada.
Another crossing point into Canada at Niagara Falls, New York, which is now home to the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Centre. The Heritage Centre opened its doors in 2018.
While visitors are welcome to tour the facility on their own, try to time your visit to coincide with one of the Freedom Conversation Tours that day.
At the tour we attended, our guide Josh helped a group of about 10, young and old, Black and white, learn more about how the enslaved escaped the United States, specifically at Niagara Falls. Inside the Heritage Center is a representation of the Cataract Hotel, which was a centre of Underground Railroad activity in Niagara Falls, N.Y. A multimedia presentation tells the stories of many people involved with helping the enslaved get to the Canadian side of the river.
Using a map, Josh also pointed out that some slaves headed south to Florida and Texas before those spaces became U. S. states. U. S.
Josh reinforced the use of the word “enslaved” rather than “slave,” explaining that the “enslaved” are people, but “slaves” are property.
The Heritage Centre is located in the 1863 U. S. Customs House, adjacent to the site of the former International Suspension Bridge, used by many freedom seekers to succeed in Canada.
Nearby, an image of the Underground Railroad is part of the Heritage Arts Mural Project on Main St.
Also, in Lewiston, New York, near the Niagara River, is the Freedom Crossing Monument, a steel sculpture that will pay tribute to the slaves who sought freedom in Canada and those who helped them.
One of the people who is famously remembered as a “conductor” of the Underground Railroad, helping to bring enslaved people to freedom, is Harriet Tubman.
Tubman moved to St. Catharines shortly after the U. S. government decided to take over the city. The U. S. Customs and Exchange Commission passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which allowed bounty hunters and slave owners to capture refugees from slavery in the northern states of the United States and return them to slavery in the southern states. Tubman helped many other people succeed in Canada between that time and the end of slavery in the United States.
One of the places where Tubman is remembered in St. John’s. Catharines is his place of worship, the British Methodist Episcopal Church in Salem Chapel. The construction of the existing church was inaugurated in 1855 and it remains an active place of worship.
We were fortunate enough to go to church with Rochelle Bush, the church administrator and historian, a descendant of freedom seekers.
“It’s part of my legacy,” Bush said. One of her relatives was a minister in the Church when Tubman was a member.
“It’s that we tell our story. It’s also for their survival.
Exhibits in the church’s basement span two walls and painstakingly document the area’s connection to Tubman and the Underground Railroad. In the sanctuary, reserved near a wall, are the original pulpit, the original pews, and an original plaque of provision.
In 2023, the U. S. National Park Service added the church to its national formula of the Underground Railroad to Freedom, the first site outside the United States to be so designated.
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