March 10, 2013 Volume 8, number 41

® FREE PRESS Independent reporting on today’s Underground Railroad

urrFreePress.com Nations Mark 100th Anniversary See our Tubman editorial on page 4 In This Issue This issue is released five days early now unfolding near Tubman's birth today in observance of the 100th an- place in Dorchester County. niversary of the passing of Under- This special issue of Free Press joins Among observances across Canada, many other commemorations across ground Railroad icon Harriet Tub- Salem Chapel in St. Catharine's, North America of the 100th anniver- man. As her birthday is unknown, Ontario, where Tubman worshiped sary of Harriet Tubman's passing. it is on the anniversary of her pass- when in Canada, is holding a spe- 1 ing on 10, 1913, which is ob- cial church service today and a served as Harriet Tubman Day. year-long series of events. The foremost Underground Railroad organization has a new Chief Execu- A growing number of states and Tubman's own words explain her tive Officer. Canadian provinces now observe better than any biographer could. Harriet Tubman Day, perhaps none In an interview with Boston aboli- 1 more tenderly than tionist Benjamin Drew, she vividly where Tubman was born. In addi- laid out her vision: " I grew up like Prize-winning Underground Railroad tion to the state's official obser- a neglected weed, ignorant of lib- historian Carl Westmoreland writes vance, an entire weekend of events of Watch Night. Plus Free Press Prize sponsored by her descendants is Please see 100th, page 3, column 1 nominations and the 2013 survey. 2

A profile of Indiana's Conner Prairie State Park and its Underground Rail- road tours

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Common Ground creates common ground. Plus a Free Press honor and an Indian immigrant finally gets Mis- sissippi to ratify the 13th Amendment. 3 This issue's editorial on why Harriet Tubman may be viewed as the most exemplary American

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Clockwise from lower right: the home for the elderly built by Tubman in Auburn, ; Tubman in very old age as a resi- dent of the home; her grave in Auburn. Robinson Named Underground Railroad Freedom Center CEO The Board of Directors of the National Underground delighted that we are able to hand the reins over to Kim Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati has named Kim Robinson, a seasoned executive who has demonstrated Robinson as Chief Executive Officer and Executive Di- the strength of his leadership at the Freedom Center. I rector of the institution. Robinson was promoted from am confident that he, with the staff and the Board, will his previous position as the Center's Director of Ad- be able to bring the Freedom Center to new heights.” vancement. Robinson replaces Donald W. Murphy who retired and Before joining the Center in 2010, Robinson served as had served as CEO since 2007. During Murphy's tenure, Vice President of Customer Business Development at the Freedom Center’s bond debt was fully retired, re- Proctor & Gamble where he was employed for twenty- ducing the annual budget by more than half, and atten- Kim Robinson eight years. Said Center Cochairman John Pepper, “I am dance increased. Underground Railroad Free Press 2 The Celebration of Watch Night and Emancipation By Carl Westmoreland

In response to our article in the last is- salom Jones, the African Episcopal sue of Underground Railroad Free Church in Philadelphia. It is that time of year to think about whom Press, long-time Underground Rail- you would like to nominate for a Free Press road activist and historian Carl The creation of the Mother Bethel Prize and what questions you would like to Westmoreland submitted the present AME congregation in 1794 in see answered in our annual survey. article which tells more of the tradi- Philadelphia and the First African tion of Watch Night. The author was Baptist Church in Savannah, Geor- 2013 Free Press Prize Nominations awarded the 2010 Underground Rail- gia in 1773 provided an opportu- road Free Press Prize in Leadership nity for Black religious leaders Each year since 2008, Underground Railroad and serves as Senior Historian at the across America to begin to establish Free Press has awarded prizes for contem- National Underground Railroad porary Underground Railroad leadership, Freedom Center. a distinct theological approach and worship style that would to this preservation and advancement of knowl- edge, the top honors in the international The tradition of Watch Night, ac- day distinguish the Black Church Underground Railroad community. Indi- cording to Rice University scholar from the traditional White churches viduals and organizations from any country Jonathan Langston Chism, in an of America. Using the discipline of address December 31, 2010, began the Methodist church and the spon- are eligible to be nominated. Visit our web- in 1733 in a Moravian congregation taneous worship style of the Baptist site for more information and nomination in what today is the Czech Repub- church, both of which Black Ameri- forms. The nomination deadline is June 30. lic. John Wesley, the founder of the cans adopted willingly in contrast You can view past winners at our website. to their having sat on their hands Methodist Church that began in The 2013 Free Press Survey England and quickly moved to and closed their minds to the staid America, believed that “Christians worship style of the Episcopal Free Press conducts annual surveys of the in- should reaffirm the Covenant with church, the last day of December ternational Underground Railroad commu- God annually.” In 1784 Wesley held and the first day of January re- nity. Survey results are posted permanently on New Year’s Eve the first Meth- flected the power of a new Church at our website each July and reports are odist Watch Night service occurring in America that coincided with the provided to top Underground Railroad ex- at the St. George’s Church in Phila- Emancipation Proclamation taking ecutives. If you have a question you would st delphia, in which both Richard Al- effect January 1 , 1863. like to see answered in the 2013 survey, len and Absalom Jones were mem- Watch Night would become a email us at [email protected] be- bers. When Allen and Jones left St. unique creation, a product of Afri- fore May 1. You can view or download past George’s, both formed their own cans in America who were respond- survey reports at our website. congregations—Allen, the African Methodist Episcopal Church; Ab- See Westmoreland, page 5, column 1

Connor Prairie One of an occasional series on Underground Railroad sites and programs Looking for evidence to study slave life in Maryland, archaeolo- gists with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Conner Prairie State Park in Fishers, Indiana, bills itself as an in- nationally-acclaimed, award-winning Follow the North Star Un- Commission exploring the Josiah Henson Special Park in Be- teractive history park and living history museum that recreates derground Railroad experience, developed from years of exten- thesda, Maryland have found a buried foundation from the days nineteenth-century Indiana life along the White River. Since sive research. of Underground Railroad icon Josiah Henson who worked on 1998, nearly 60,000 people have participated in Conner Prairie’s Participants walk an old Underground Railroad route rain or the Park's Isaac Riley farm until 1830. The dig continues work shine and are introduced by docents to the hazards that were en- begun in 2006 when Montgomery County purchased the historic countered by freedom seekers along the way. Follow the North site. Star also offers an indoor evening lecture program on the local Underground Railroad. Conner Prairie was a gift from industrialist Eli Lilly in the 1930s. In 1974, Lilly donated the historic, restored pioneer home of Wil- liam Conner to a public charitable trust of which nearby Earlham College, a Quaker institution, was named trustee. Lilly also transferred 1,400 acres of surrounding farmland to the college on which Earlham built a museum and constructed Prairietown, an authentic replica of an 1836 village. The College owns and oper- ates Conner Prairie and is advised by a volunteer advisory board. Conner Prairie also operates the Lenape Indian Camp as an in- A cabin at Indiana's Connor Prairie terpretive experience. Interactive History Park Underground Railroad Free Press 3 Cultivating Common Ground Among All Peoples When Walt Michael spent college sum- learn a range of other stringed instru- mers as a volunteer in West Virginia cre- ments. At the cabins and barns of the de- ating a library from an old two-room scendants of the Scots-Irish travelers who schoolhouse, he couldn't have known that had populated the hills surrounding the what he would find in the far hollows town of Welch, West Virginia, population there would lead to his life's work. 2400, the young volunteer played his gui- tar and picked his banjo. While visiting a Nearly twenty years ago as Artist In store on Bull Creek to find musicians to Residence at McDaniel College, Michael play at a gathering at the new library, he launched Common Ground on the Hill, met Christian Bailey, an old banjo player an annual summer program promoting who showed him seven handcrafted fret- good race relations through traditional less banjos hanging on his cabin wall. Blues legend John Hammond wails at music. The Common Ground centerpiece This chance meeting bent Michael's life to Common Ground's 2012 summer session is its two-week summer program which traditional music and led to field record- now offers 250 courses to nearly a thou- was performing at the Closing Ceremo- ings in the Library of Congress. sand participants annually and perform- nies of the Winter Olympics to a televi- ances by international roots music stars. Michael registered voters in the deep sion audience of 900 million. Now in his Summer programs are also run in Gettys- South and learned family tradition as his sixties, Walt Michael is regarded as the burg and the Arizona borderlands, and minister father toiled in racially integrat- foremost American player of the ham- year-round performances in Baltimore ing the Methodist Church in Washington, mered dulcimer which in the United and Westminster, Maryland. DC, and Maryland. At a New York State States is heard mainly in traditional roots festival, Michael first encountered the music, his forte. Related to ten clergy over the last 200 hammered dulcimer ("sweet sound" in years including his father, grandfather After 25 years recording and performing Latin and Greek), an ancient stringed in- and sister, and descended from Under- across North America and Europe, Mi- strument played across all of Eurasia and ground Railroad safe-house operators, chael founded Common Ground where the ancestor of the piano. Only a handful Michael has set a lifelong example of fos- people learn traditional arts and engage of North American hammered dulcimer tering good race relations, finding com- in cross-cultural dialog. players were left. Mesmerized and capti- mon ground among all peoples. Coming vated by the haunting sound of the in- Sign-ups for Common Ground 2013, naturally to him, he is good at it. strument, Walt took up the dulcimer, which will run from June 30 through July A Supreme Court Page as a teen, Michael placing it in the center of his Appalachian 14, will begin March 15th. Visit common- th 100 Anniversary had picked up the guitar and would later music ensembles, and within ten years groundonthehill.org for more. th 100th Anniversary Mississippi Ratifies 13 Amendment in 2013 erty, having no experience of it. Then I It took a while, 148 years to be precise, Long the international whipping boy for was not happy or contented: every time I but on February 7, Mississippi got around the worst of racism, Mississippi today saw a white man I was afraid of being to ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment, boasts of more African-American elected carried away. I had two sisters carried yes, the one which on December 12, 1865, officials than any other state, integrated away in a chain-gang — one of them left outlawed slavery as the constitutionally universities where governors once stood two children. We were always uneasy. required three-fourths of state legislatures in the doorway to deny entry to African- Now I’ve been free, I know what a dread- had agreed to ratification. It took an im- , and a more enlightened atti- ful condition slavery is. I have seen hun- migrant to get it done in Mississippi. tude than a few northern states today. dreds of escaped slaves, but I never saw After votes stretching back decades refus- But Mississippi still moulders rock bot- one who was willing to go back and be a ing to ratify, the state legislature finally tom in poverty, obesity, human develop- slave. I have no opportunity to see my voted for ratification in 1995 but the pa- ment and black-white disparity, and has friends in my native land. We would perwork which was supposed to be for- the next highest incarceration rate, with rather stay in our native land, if we could warded to the United States Archivist to three-fourths of its inmates black, still be as free there as we are here. I think make Mississippi's ratification official providing cheap labor antebellum style. slavery is the next thing to hell. If a per- was then mysteriously shelved. Enter Dr. son would send another into bondage, he At least officially if not entirely in spirit Ranjan Batra, an Indian immigrant and would, it appears to me, be bad enough Mississippi has now banned slavery. Said associate professor of neurobiology and to send him into hell, if he could." Batra, "Everyone here would like to put anatomical sciences at the University of this part of Mississippi's past behind us." Of her unwavering determination, Tub- Mississippi Medical Center. man said, "I started with this idea in my After viewing Lincoln last year, Batra be- Free Press Publisher Honored head, there’s two things I’ve got a right came curious as to how quickly the Thir- Underground Railroad Free Press publisher to, and these are Death or Liberty. One or teenth Amendment had been ratified and Peter H. Michael has been named by Af- the other I mean to have. No one will take when each state had done so. He found rican Diaspora World Tourism to Who's me back alive; I shall fight for my liberty, that 49 states had ratified, most recently Who In Black Cultural Heritage. Honorees and when the time has come for me to go, Kentucky in 1976, but not yet Mississippi. will be recognized at an April 27 gala in the Lord will let them kill me." Batra and a friend contacted Mississippi Atlanta. Others being honored are Con- For more, see the Free Press editorial on Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann who gressman John Lewis, Dr. Julius Garvey, the following page. agreed to finally file the paperwork. and Emmy-awarded Monica Pearson.

Underground Railroad Free Press 4 Editorial: A Most Exemplary American On the 100th anniversary of the passing in her own time, and the last major fig- of the American icon Harriet Tubman, ure of the Underground Railroad to die. things you can no figure among the uncounted heroic With her passing, Americans' memories do at Free Press souls of the Underground Railroad, the of the Underground Railroad began to institution called the war for the soul of ebb until by the 1960s only one in five America, is better remembered 160 students was receiving any instruction years later than is Harriet Tubman. about the Underground Railroad from Click on links at urrFreePress.com After fading for close to a century, rec- kindergarten through graduate school. to do any of the following. ognition of the moral example which Beginning in the 1960s, elementary and Subscribe Tubman set as Underground Railroad high school teachers and then entire conductor and safe-house operator has school districts were the first to begin View or Add to Datebook grown rapidly since the national resur- reawakening the North American mem- gence of Underground Railroad interest ory of the Underground Railroad. Re- Send News, Letters, Articles or Ads swelled about fifteen years ago. search through one of the annual Free Join the Community or View Lynx Press surveys of the international Un- In 1990, Tubman's descendants per- derground Railroad community showed Make a Free Press Prize Nomination suaded Congress to declare March 10 as that by the decade of the 2000s over 90 an annually observed Harriet Tubman Rate an Underground Railroad Site percent of American and Canadian Day, and on the same day, Canada be- school children were receiving instruc- List an Underground Railroad Site gan observing Harriet Tubman Day. In tion on the Underground Railroad, up 2000 Baltimore's Louis Fields persuaded Read Underground Railroad Surveys from 20 percent at best 40 years before. the Maryland legislature to become the first state to do the same. After several A spark that went far in rekindling the attempts in recent years, Maryland's nation's consciousness of the Under- and New York's Senators have reintro- ground Railroad is credited to Anthony duced a bill in the 2013 Congress to es- Cohen whose 1995 walk of the route of Your Ad Here (but any size) tablish Harriet Tubman National Parks his Underground Railroad fugitive an- on Maryland's Eastern Shore where cestor from Maryland to Canada was Free Press accepts paid ad- Tubman was born in 1822 and escaped reported in a seminal Smithsonian article. vertising to promote your site, slavery in 1849, and at Auburn, New By 1998, the federal government had es- program, event, publication York, where she lived out her life after tablished the first of three Underground and more. Call or email us. the Civil War. In 2012, Maryland passed Railroad programs, the National Park legislation to commission and donate a Service's Network to Freedom. The two Tubman statue to the new National others are run by the Smithsonian Insti- Capitol Visitors Center. tution and the Department of Education. Underground Railroad Free Press® Not as well remembered among Tub- In 2004 the centerpiece of the interna- Independent Reporting on Today’s Underground Railroad man's Underground Railroad accom- tional Underground Railroad renais- plishments are those over the last half sance, the superb new National Under- Peter H. Michael, Publisher century of her long life. ground Railroad Freedom Center, was [email protected] 301 | 874 | 0235 dedicated in Cincinnati. In 2005 Fergus During the Civil War, she became the Bordewich's definitive Underground Underground Railroad Free Press is a free news- first American woman to lead troops Railroad history, Bound for Canaan, was letter published by Underground Railroad when she captured plantations on South Free Press, 2455 Ballenger Creek Pike, Adam- published, and the National Abolition Carolina's Combahee River, in one week stown, Maryland, 21710. Back issues are Hall of Fame was established in Peter- freeing over 700 slaves, more than twice available free at our web site. Free Press is dis- boro, New York. In 2006, Underground tributed by email. Send email address changes as many as she had liberated during her Railroad Free Press began publication be- and new subscriber email addresses to pu- decade on the Underground Railroad. [email protected]. coming the most read Underground We welcome news articles and letters to the For most of the rest of her life, Tubman Railroad news publication within two editor. All rights to submissions including made her living here and abroad as one years, now with about 80,000 readers. emails and letters will be treated as uncondi- of her era's most sought-after speakers. Its central international registries of Un- tionally assigned to Free Press for publication Overcoming obstacles of race and gen- derground Railroad organizations and and copyright purposes, and subject to our unrestricted right to edit and comment edito- der, it took her 30 years until 1895 to re- events, Lynx and Datebook, were rially unless otherwise agreed with authors. ceive her soldier's pension, using it to launched in 2006, followed in 2008 by Free Press accepts tasteful nonpolitical adver- realize her long-held dream of a home the Free Press Prizes, the Underground tising which we reserve the right to reject for for elderly indigent women which she Railroad community's top awards. any reason which in our sole judgment is not operated in Auburn. By her eighties, acceptable. Submit advertising in pdf, jpg or Perhaps what has reacquainted the pub- text formats. Visit our website for rates and Tubman herself was cared for there as in lic with the Underground Railroad more layout specifications. her photograph on page 1 here. directly than anything has been owners Contents of any Free Press issue are protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in Aged 91 or thereabouts, Harriet Tub- of Underground Railroad safe-houses whole or in part for any reason without prior man died at the home on March 10, and routes who have put their sites on approval of the publisher. Underground Rail- 1913, at the time one of her nation's the Internet and site maps, and opened road Free Press is a registered trademark. most revered figures, literally a legend Please see Still Leading, page 5, column 2

Underground Railroad Free Press 5 Westmoreland ing to the announcement President Lincoln made to the Con- evil is round de President. While we set here dey is trying to gress after the 1862 battle at Antietam, Maryland, that he would make him break his word. But we have come to dis “Watch emancipate enslaved people in the states that were in rebellion Night” ter see he does not break his word.” to the United States in January 1863. The Black church became The [preliminary September, 1862] Emancipation Proclamation the theological channel through which 250 years of hoped-for freed no one, but it started an irreversible tide that drowned deliverance would be dressed in the worship style unique to slavery as the clock moved closer to midnight December 31, Africans in America. The Black church in the North, the slave 1862. Through the euphoria of the anticipation, the expectation streets on the plantations of the South, the Parade Ground of of terror of the backlash from White America to Black freedom the First South Carolina African Troops at Beaufort, South that would lead to the creation of state sponsored apartheid and Carolina, became places where Blacks celebrated emancipation. segregation, Black America would go to church that night for It was in the Black church where the watching, the praying, the remembering, for renewal and a return to the front line of the waiting for midnight took on its own style that continues until battle for the Dignity of Man and Woman. In each city in Amer- today at Bethel AME Church in Baltimore, Maryland, and is re- ica, December 31st finds millions of Africans in America watch- flected in song and prayer across America: ing, waiting and praying for the balance of freedom still denied. “Watchman from the East, what time is it? There are voices in America that express little patience with re- It is 3 minutes to Midnight, and all is well. membering enslavement, emancipation, Civil Rights and the Watchman from the West, what time is it? pain and discord that came to individuals who pursued reme- It is 2 minutes to Midnight and all is well. dies to cure those deficiencies. There is a mindset that says, “We Watchman to the South, what time is it? should move on.” Yet there is a truthful reality that children in It is 1 minute to Midnight, and all is well. American are victims of neglect and violence, and young Watchman to the North, what time is it? women in particular are unwilling victims of the sex industry. It’s Midnight, It’s Midnight” People of African descent constitute twelve percent of the popu- lation, but Jonathan Langston Chism points out that “there is a A December 31, 2006, New York Times article attempted to link child poverty phenomenon that begins in the cradle and surges the Night Watch tradition of the Methodist Church established almost nonstop through a pipeline that funnels too many Black by John Wesley but ignored the impact of race and slavery on youth down the road to prison.” In today’s America over one Blacks in the White Methodist church. When Richard Allen, million Black males are in prison or under the supervision of Absolom Jones and others established the African Methodist federal, state and local parole or probation systems. It is our be- Episcopal church, they took with them the Methodist discipline; lief that in the tradition of Watch Night and the Emancipation they took the Christian Bible; they took the weapon of the pow- Proclamation of 1863, the sesquicentennial observance of 2013 erless—faith. Having been in the storm too long, having stood of “How We Got Over" should continue and be renewed each in the slave balcony in the North and South, and having been January first until the last of us is free. denied the opportunity to shout in the White Methodist church in Cincinnati, the Black church turned inward. It used the disci- Still Leading pline, the Bible, and the drama of the coming of emancipation their properties to public tours. The most authentic we have to further create a new Black worship experience the Emancipa- seen is Dobbin House in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It is hard to tion Proclamation heralded. The crossing of chained ancestors count how many Underground Railroad sites have been opened was heralded, they believed, by the parting of the waters so that or listed but it now would be well into three figures. To locate the despised in America could go free. The raw emotional and learn about sites, use the maps of MapMuse power of the voices of many of the four million enslaved Blacks (find.mapmuse.com/map/underground-rr) and PBS on that “New Year Morning” was heard in Manchester, Eng- (pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/interactive- land, by working class Whites, and in a matter of days they too map/abolitionists-map). celebrated our freedom, celebrated the bond of the powerless. The public now enjoys a network of Underground Railroad Henry Adams wrote to his brother Charles from England that, sites open to the public, excellent histories, biographies and “The Emancipation Proclamation has done more for us here novels, the grand Freedom Center, a hall of fame, federal, state [the U.S. was seeking to prevent England and France from sup- and local programs, near universal instruction on the Under- porting the Confederacy in the Civil War] than all our former ground Railroad, and even a burgeoning network of bicycle victories and all our diplomacy.” The moral high ground the tours, all in the last 15 years. Perhaps the greatest gift of this re- United States gradually gained by sharing the bounty of free- surgence is the recapturing of bedrock moral principles. dom with Black people became believable to a growing number As a result of all of this, we now also see Underground Railroad of observers around the world. figures being recognized in the pantheon of American greats, as it was they, more than the nation's Nobelists, explorers, inven- At the Israel Bethel Church in Washington, DC, Rev. Henry tors or generals, who most clearly articulated the moral bedrock Turner lead a service that was reflective of what was going on, of what it means to be an American, no one more so than the and goes on until this day, where Black people purge their de- modest, determined and inspiring Harriet Tubman. In this re- mons, dance, shout and speak of their fears and pain. As Rever- surgence of interest in the Underground Railroad in which a end Turner read the Emancipation Proclamation, “Men growing number of all-but-forgotten American and Canadian squealed, women fainted, dogs barked, white and colored heroes have become most deservedly reilluminated, it is Tub- shook hands, songs were sung.” In Boston a Black minister who man who seems to have become the foremost symbol of the in- stayed with his congregation rather than join Frederick Doug- stitution and of what it delivered to American morality. las, Harriet Beecher Stowe and William Lloyd Garrison at Tre- mont Temple, was heard to exclaim, "Brothers and Sisters, to- Let us all honor the exemplary American, Araminta Harriet morrow will be the day for the oppressed. But we all know dat Ross Tubman Davis, this and every March 10.