They said it hasn’t been done before. Pilgrims come on tour buses — even bicycles — to follow Harriet Tubman’s pathway to freedom from the Eastern Shore of Maryland to Philadelphia. But no one has shown up with the idea of retracing her steps on foot. Certainly not a group of young teenagers from the inner city.
It all began with a school lesson. The teens, even the ones who usually cringe at the mention of the word “history,” were captivated by the courage and cunning that made Harriet one of the Underground Railroad’s most notorious conductors. One session led to two; two led to three; and then a plan formed to visit the Harriet Tubman Home and Museum in Auburn, a small city in western New York State where Harriet lived out the last five decades of her life after the Civil War.
“Aunt Harriet helped over three hundred slaves escape the bonds of slavery. That’s why she became known as the Moses of her people,” shared museum curator Pauline Copes Johnson with the seven seventh and eighth graders from the Albany Free School. Mrs. Johnson is a great-grandniece and one of closest living descendants of Harriet Tubman, whose nearly century-long life never allowed for the bearing of children of her own.
“She carried a pistol in the waistband of her dress and whenever a passenger got too scared and threatened to turn back, Aunt Harriet pulled that gun of hers out and said, ‘Move on or die.’ She had to do that or else they all would have been caught and terrible things done to them.” Mrs. Johnson stood beneath a life-size painting of her great-great-aunt, one that shows her staring fiercely out of coal-black eyes and leaning on a long walking staff. There is no small resemblance.
Mrs. Johnson’s vivid recollections breathed life into the two-dimensional information the students had picked up in those earlier history lessons, a fact that was abundantly clear when the kids later paid a visit to Harriet’s final resting place about a mile from her former home. Like students everywhere out on a field trip, they were in a light-hearted mood as they bounced through the cemetery in search of the grave. But a sudden hush fell over the group when someone spotted the headstone resting serenely under a tall pine. Without realizing, the kids arranged themselves around it in a reverent semi-circle, each thinking his or her own private thoughts about a hero that had attached herself securely to their psyches. The silence lasted several minutes.
Back in Albany, New York, a new idea emerged: researching the route of Harriet Tubman’s initial, solo escape, and then heading down to Maryland to try to retrace it. A visit to the library produced a half-dozen Tubman biographies, some written for children, others for adults. Interestingly, all had differing accounts of Harriet’s first flight to freedom.
A consult with the Internet turned up the names of several Harriet Tubman societies on the Eastern Shore. Letters and phone calls requesting research assistance were met with enthusiastic responses. The historical groups were delighted that middle school students from the far north were showing such an interest in Harriet Tubman. These dedicated historians have made it their mission in life to uncover and document as many details as possible about Harriet’s early life, in order to separate fact from the historical fiction that fills the pages of many of the existing biographies. The consensus among the local experts: it is doubtful anyone will ever know for certain the route that Harriet took that very first time. It was only later, when her association with the Underground Railroad was widely known, that people began recording the details of her exploits for posterity.
Many clues have been gathered, however, and the historical societies were again delighted when the students asked them to serve as the students’ guides. A winter of fundraising ensued. The students put on two benefit dinners — the second a soul food feast featuring fried chicken, catfish, and all of the trimmings — staged a raffle, and successfully applied for a grant from Teaching Tolerance magazine.
Confidant that sufficient funds would materialize, the students and their teacher began finalizing an itinerary. They decided to add one final stop. After reaching Harriet’s final destination in Philadelphia, they would travel to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress on behalf of Harriet Tubman’s family.
The story is this: The kids also learned from Mrs. Johnson that her great-great aunt had served in the Union Army for three years during the Civil War, but was never compensated for her services as a nurse, spy, scout, and soldier. In 1997 the family’s pro bono attorney petitioned then-President Clinton for the $1,500 – $1.5 million in today’s dollars – owed to Harriet in order to expand their educational facilities in Auburn.
In a strategy discussion over whom in Congress to target, the girls in the class expressed a strong preference for Hillary Clinton. They wanted to speak with a woman in a position of power. The teacher managed to convince the boys of the logic of the girls’ choice on the grounds that Mrs. Clinton is their senator and represents one of the most powerful states in the nation. The irony of her relationship to the former president, who took no action on the petition for Harriet’s back pay, was lost on no one.
One of the girls volunteered to write Senator Clinton. Melissa, aged thirteen, explained the nature of the class trip, outlined the Tubman family’s request, and asked for a face-to-face meeting. Within a week there was a call from the senator’s office saying that she wanted to meet with the class. A date was set for the Tuesday following the group’s Saturday arrival in Philadelphia.
Wednesday, April 24 — Departure Day. The group — seven students, their teacher, a nineteen-year-old intern, and the fiancée of a former teacher who has volunteered to drive the van while the rest are walking — is blessed with a cloudless, cornflower-blue sky. Perfect weather for traveling. They load the school van with camping gear, two large coolers, and far too much clothing, and, after a hasty return for forgotten maps, are on the Interstate heading south by mid-morning.
The excitement is palpable. Six of the students have never been on a long trip before. First destination: Bucktown, Maryland, where Harriet Tubman lived out the first twenty-nine years of her life as the property of the Edward Brodas family. The Brodas’ were small-scale planters who derived the bulk of their income from the sale of timber to shipyards in Baltimore and surplus slaves to expanding cotton plantations in the Deep South.
Bucktown residents Jay and Susan Meredith have invited the group to camp out the first night in their front yard. The Meredith property sits adjacent to the Brodas plantation — no longer standing — and has been in Jay’s family for the past 200 years. Jay and Susan are both ardent Harriet Tubmanophiles and possess many artifacts from the period of Harriet’s enslavement.
After an uneventful drive, the group arrives not long before the sun begins to sink beneath the Eastern Shore’s interminable flatness. Twelve-year-old Sarah sights a bald eagle perched in a tree immediately across the road as the van is slowing to a stop in front of the Meredith’s. A sign perhaps?
The road-weary travelers are greeted by Dr. Kay McElvey, a teacher by day and in her spare time the volunteer Director of Tourism for the Harriet Tubman Organization in nearby Cambridge, a city infamously known for a violent race riot in the late 1960s following an incendiary speech by Black Panther leader H. Rap Brown. Unbeknownst to the kids, Kay is here to prepare them for the twilight appearance of an apparition.
“I understand you all want to experience what it’s like to be a runaway slave.” Kay has gotten out a large pot from the back hatch of her car and placed it in the center of the circle of children. “Well, the first thing you would want to do is eat a good meal, because you don’t know how long it will be ’til the next one. But not too heavy, because you’re going to have to move fast.”
The pot is filled with a meatless homemade vegetable soup that Kay has prepared. Next to it is a pan of sweet, yellow cornbread made from coarsely ground meal. Kay serves the traditional meal into Styrofoam bowls, the only concession to modernity.
“Slaves usually didn’t have utensils to eat with. There are some plastic spoons in my car, but if you want to get into the frame of mind of a slave getting ready to run away, then you will eat with your hands the way they did. Is everyone okay with that?”
Heads, some a bit bewildered, nod in unison around the circle.
While everyone is eating, Kay explains that if Harriet Tubman were coming to lead a group of passengers northward along the Underground Railroad, then there would have to be a way to spread the word among the slaves, almost all of whom were illiterate, without the master or the overseer catching on. She asks the group how this might have been accomplished. The kids know from their research that the answer is through songs, ones that sounded like harmless Negro spirituals, but actually contained code words that communicated the necessary information.
Kay adroitly draws Dearon, who is the oldest member of the class and least eager to participate in the discussion, into helping compose a song that this group could use to let folks know when and where to be ready to flee. She asks him for a word to symbolize the opportunity to escape. Dearon, born in the ghettoes of Kingston, Jamaica, suggests “train.” For Harriet Tubman he proposes “Moses.” Kay, Dearon and the others spend the next fifteen minutes completing a four-line verse. Emily, the intern and an accomplished singer, contributes a rhythmic melody.
The train is coming on Friday night
To the great, white house in the sky (the little church down the road)
Moses, is going to lead us,
To the green pastures of home (freedom in the North)
While everyone is happily clapping and rehearsing their creation, a small, sturdily built African American woman in a homespun dress and a red bandana picks her way unnoticed through a line of trees to the north. As she approaches the circle of singers, faces turn and the song stumbles to a halt.
“Hello, Harriet,” welcomes Kay, “I think the group is ready for you.”
The sun has fully set now, and the crickets are busy warming up a tune of their own.
“I heard your song, and I likes it,” answers the woman in the red bandana.
“Now it’s time to go, before someone sees us standing here. Follow me and stay real low.”
She leads the group toward a series of outbuildings behind the Meredith home. Abruptly, she halts and seizes Dearon, who has worn a dubious expression ever since she appeared, firmly by the upper arm. Like Kay, she rightly senses him to be the leader among the boys.
“You don’t want to come with us?”
“I’m scared,” mocks Dearon.
The woman’s face remains set with a deep seriousness. “Move ahead, or I’ll have to kill you.” She yanks roughly on the resistant boy’s arm and sweeps him forward with her. A look of genuine anxiety replaces his former smirk.
“First we gots to pick up another passenger.”
The woman motions for the group to duck down alongside an old shed. She begins singing in a low voice. Steal away. Steal away to Jesus.
A boy emerges and joins the group. He would later turn out to be one of the Meredith sons, asked by his mother to play a part in this mini-drama.
The woman, with Dearon still firmly in tow, whisks the group in a wide, fast paced, twenty-minute circle around the Meredith property. She stops when they reach their starting point, everyone panting heavily.
No one doubts that they have just had a strange and unexpected encounter with Harriet Tubman.
“Harriet” is Vernetter Pinder. Like Kay, Vernetter is a teacher whose avocation is working to keep alive the memory of the Moses of her people. Now in her late forties, she once attended a segregated one-room schoolhouse just a few miles down the road from the site of the Brodas farm. She is also the lay leader of a local AME Zion Church, one very similar to Harriet Tubman’s house of worship when she was a slave.
Once the group arrives back in her side yard, Susan Meredith comes out of the house and introduces herself. Susan, Kay, and Vernetter chat amiably amongst themselves while the kids buzz about their recent adventure. Clearly the three women are no strangers to each other.
“Okay, now I get to have them for a while,” Susan says loudly enough for everyone to hear.
A flurry of thank yous and farewells accompanies Kay and Vernetter out to Kay’s car. Susan beckons to those remaining to follow her and leads them through the gathering darkness to an old clapboard building that squats beside a crossroads at one far corner of her property. She opens the door, and at the flick of a switch two bare bulbs hanging from the rafters throw off a dull, amber light, giving the room a sepia tone effect.
Susan invites the kids and their chaperones to sit on a series of old benches and chairs that line one wall. A heavy wooden counter stretches the length of the opposite wall, with a rusty cast iron scale once used to weigh out dry goods resting on one end. The remaining surface is cluttered with a mishmash of nineteenth-century artifacts, which are also displayed on all four walls.
“My husband and I have documents indicating that this was the general store where Harriet Tubman was hit in the head by an overseer while coming to the aid of a fellow slave. Do y’all know that story?”
A few murmur “Yes.” Others nod their heads affirmatively. Variations of the same story were included in all of the biographies that the class consulted in preparation for the trip.
Susan crosses over to the antique scale. And this could possibly be the two-pound weight that struck her.”
She hands the weight to the child nearest her, and while it travels slowly from hand to hand, she unveils her next surprise.
“Here is the knife handle belonging to that same overseer. Jay found it a while back when he was replacing some rotten floorboards in the big house,” Susan continues, setting the handle in motion behind the weight. The overseer had carefully burned his signature into the hardwood, and it is still plainly legible. The boys are particularly impressed.
But Susan is just warming up. “My husband is a direct descendant of slave owners on this land, and he and his brothers found these here,” she says, lifting the next artifact off the counter and starting it around the room behind the others. It is a set of iron shackles, still serviceable, with the key inserted in the lock. The kids look like they’re playing with a pair of toy handcuffs, except for the grim expressions on their faces.
Next Susan pulls out a tightly sealed Ziploc bag containing a small, hardbound book. “I want you to hear something that a friend of Harriet Tubman’s wrote about her back in 1869.”
Susan begins to read from a first edition of a Tubman biography written by the Quaker abolitionist Sarah Bradford. In simple, unadorned prose the author describes Harriet Tubman’s daring exploits. The seven teenagers are entranced. Somehow time is turning in reverse.
Susan closes the book and heads straight into her closing message. “My husband feels terrible that his ancestors once kept slaves. Even today relations between the races in Dorchester County aren’t as they should be, and Jay and I want to do whatever we can to help improve them. We hope to establish a museum here, so that people will have a better understanding of the past and so that this county will have something to be proud of.”
Outside the night has turned cool and starry with a freshening westerly breeze blowing in off the Chesapeake Bay. After a bonfire and general horseplay in the Meredith’s yard, the travelers from the north divide up and snug themselves into a hodgepodge of backpacking tents. Sleep comes easily.
Thursday, April 25. A deluge lets loose about 3:00 a.m. The children sleep through the pelting, windblown downpour, but awaken to soaking wet sleeping bags and pools of frigid water on the floors of their tents. One by one they dash to the van in search of warmth and dry clothing. Amidst an atmosphere of general misery, the group decides to take advantage of a pause in the rain and break camp, then head into Cambridge in search of a laundromat’s bulk dryers and a hot breakfast.
At the diner, they meet up with today’s guide. He is John Creighton, another volunteer for the Harriet Tubman Organization and a historian by trade. He is currently working on a book entitled Harriet Tubman Country: A Guide to the Multicultural History of the Central Eastern Shore.
John has generously set aside the next twelve hours to lead the group along the route that his personal detective work tells him Harriet Tubman followed northward. With the rain showing no signs of letting up, he decides it best to join the group in the van and take them on a driving tour of the area. The first stop is the creek where a six-year-old Harriet Tubman was made to trap muskrats for market. Next, John directs the van to pull over in front of a large decaying farmhouse, the site of the abandoned timber plantation to which Harriet’s father was often rented out.
“Harriet possessed great strength and stamina even as a child,” explains John. “She spent considerable time here cutting down trees right alongside her father and the other men.”
John continues in his distinctive Eastern Shore accent. “Slaves felled the trees with axes and two-man saws and floated the trees down to the Chesapeake Bay where they were loaded onto large ships. If you’d like, I can take you to see a canal that slaves dug for floating the logs to the river that flows into the bay.”
The canal site is on the way to the most important stop that John has planned for today, the stretch of the Choptank — the river that most Tubman authorities think Harriet followed northeastward to its source in Delaware — where John now believes she began her escape.
But first John suggests that they check out the state park farther upstream where the group is thinking about camping for the night. When they reach the deserted campground, the storm has begun breaking up. It is still quite chilly, however, and the young teens suddenly balk at the idea of another cold night in tents.
Chaperones and students hold a quick conference — teacher reminding students of their original intent to follow Harriet Tubman’s trail as closely as possible. This place represents the approximate halfway mark between the starting point of Harriet’s exodus and the town of Camden, Delaware, where she was taken in and helped by a Quaker family. The teacher’s proclamation that she didn’t even have a tent holds very little sway at this particular moment.
The group negotiates a compromise: If there are showers available, then they will sleep along the river. Otherwise it’s back into Cambridge after this evening’s re-enactment walk to find an inexpensive motel. A drive-thru exploration of the campground yields neither bathing facilities nor a ranger to ask about them. Meanwhile, bellies are starting to rumble loudly in the rear of the van. The day’s travels have taken them well past lunch and the reassuring effects of the late breakfast have long since worn off. John says he knows of a little restaurant in a small town on the way back to the canal, where they serve good food for cheap.
The eatery is straight out of the 1950s. The hungry students don’t seem to notice, but they draw long looks from the other diners as they thread their way through tightly spaced tables to an unoccupied side wing. Mixed racial groups remain an uncommon sight in this part of the country. When the waitress later brings the check, she leans over and quietly asks, “Is that y’all’s van out in the parking lot with the New York plates?” before adding, “Some of the customers were wondering …”
After dinner John reverses direction along the back roads of Dorchester County to a broad expanse of freshwater marsh. He asks the driver to pull over just before an approaching bridge and leads the group onto the middle of the short span. Pointing down at the ten-foot-wide channel of fast-flowing water beneath them, he says, “This is one of the canals I mentioned earlier. You can tell by how straight its sides are that it is man-made. Back in the early 1800s, it took large gangs of slaves working side by side with picks and shovels to dig it.”
One of the kids asks why the water is running by so swiftly even though the area is totally flat. “It’s because the tide is going out now,” John answers, followed by a brief digression on the mechanics of the tidal cycle.
Then came the day’s high point. John directs the van onto an old dirt road bisecting a still-dormant cornfield. After they slow to a stop, he turns back towards the kids to tell them he believes this is the road Harriet may have snuck along under the cover of darkness in order to reach the Choptank. The plan had been to walk to the river and back in the dark, but John’s concern over the condition of the road after the recent spring monsoons, as well as the potentially negative reaction of the locals to a group of strangers and an out-of-state vehicle, has persuaded him to move the event forward a little.
With the now-visible sun hanging low and red in the sky, the entourage disembarks for the mile-and-a-half walk. As they near the river, marsh creeps up on either side of the road. Soon it will be alive with the sounds of frogs and other night creatures. John gathers the group around him when they reach the water. “Most of the biographers assume that Harriet escaped from the Brodas plantation in Bucktown. But I have come across evidence suggesting that she wasn’t working there at the time, and may in fact have been out at her father’s place only a few miles from here.”
Much to John’s surprise, Melissa, Holley, and Sarah remove their shoes and begin wading along the edge of the rain-swollen river. John cautions them against getting out into the swift current, and then continues. “Harriet decided to run away after her master died and she learned she was about to be sold south to help cover a large debt to the store that he had left behind.”
When he is finished with his description of the first stage of her escape, John warns, “It’ll be dark soon. We should start thinking about heading back.”
Nightfall has closed in around them by the time they reach the van, and it is well past 10:00 before the ten Albanians successfully squeeze themselves into a double room on the outskirts of Cambridge.
Friday, April 26. The group awakens warm and dry, but this time there are various complaints of snoring and feet stuck in faces. After an instant breakfast of juice and cold cereal – compliments of the local supermarket – they hurriedly pack up for the ninety-minute drive to Camden.
John Creighton is passing the torch to a hybrid Harriet Tubman historical society in this quaint Eastern Shore town, which is dripping with colonial history and rich in Underground Railroad sites. This day’s tour will be co-led by Mike and Alyssa Richards from the Camden Friends Meeting and Lucreatia Wilson, director of the Star Hill Museum. The Camden Meeting House was a refuge for runaway slaves, and many of its members opened their homes to runaways as well. The Star Hill Museum, housed in the Star Hill A.M.E. Church and located about three miles outside Camden in the historic African American village by the same name, is also a major Underground Railroad site.
The present-day partnership between the two 19th-century institutions is a fascinating recapitulation of their earlier joint effort to pass along runaway slaves. Star Hill was settled by free African Americans in the late 1700s on land given to them by Camden Quakers, who later helped the fledgling village to build its church.
The group meets their hosts at the Friends Meeting House, where the students and their chaperones have been granted permission to spend the night in the new Sunday school wing. After the tents have been hung out to dry in the sun on a makeshift clothesline, everyone accompanies Mike into the sanctuary of the Meeting House for an introductory talk on the critical role that Quakers played in the Underground Railroad.
The young teenagers quietly take their seats on the dark wooden benches of the sanctuary, which was built in 1805. “Quakers have a deep-seated commitment to fairness and equality, and we believe strongly in nonviolence,” Mike begins. “We dislike prejudice of any kind, too. As a result, many, many Quakers took a strong stand against slavery and became an important part of the Underground Railroad.”
Appearing to be in his early sixties, Mike has sacrificed an exquisite late-April afternoon of gardening — his already golden tan betrays his passion — in order to help explain the workings of the Underground Railroad to the children. When his talk is finished and all the kids’ questions have been answered, he leads them up a steep narrow stairway to the attic, the home of the original Sunday school, in order to show them a false wall where runaways were hidden from pursuing slave catchers.
Mike has expertly set the stage for Lucreatia Wilson from Star Hill. With Mike behind the wheel, she leads the group west out of Camden on a paved two-lane road to pick up Harriet Tubman’s trail at the headwaters of the Choptank.
“This same road was here in 1849 when Harriet Tubman was trying to reach freedom in Pennsylvania,” Lucreatia explains from the short bridge over the waterway that here is only a faint trace of the surging river the girls had waded in the day before. “She followed the Choptank from Dorchester County to this point and then ducked out from under the bridge, which would have been made out of wood in those days. Then she snuck alongside the road we just drove out on into Camden.”
The two vehicles reverse direction and stop just inside the driveway of an old farm about halfway back to town. Lucreatia sends the students in search of a large flat stone sticking up just above ground level.
Harvey, one of the younger boys in the group, shouts to Lucreatia that he has located it. She confirms his find and calls out for the rest of the group to join them. “Back in the days of slavery, there was a large barn on this spot. It belonged to a Quaker family named the Cowgills. They hid runaway slaves here and brought food out to them because they probably hadn’t had much to eat while they were traveling up the banks of the river.”
There isn’t time to dally — still several more stops to make before a 6:00 dinner reservation. The next stop is Star Hill, where Lucreatia settles the group into pews in the sanctuary of the church. The floor sags badly in places, belying the advancing age of the plainly elegant building.
“Because there were many free African Americans living in Star Hill, runaway slaves were less conspicuous,” Lucreatia begins. “And so a lot of runaway slaves passed through here.”
“Slaves used songs with code words in them to pass secret information to each other,” she goes on, but is interrupted by Sarah telling her that her class had made up their own song in Bucktown. Lucreatia asks for a rendition, and the kids happily oblige her.
“That’s a beautiful one,” admires Lucreatia, smiling broadly. “To tell folks about Star Hill, people would sing about traveling toward the star on top of the hill. Then, when the coast was clear here, someone would light a lamp that hung behind the stained glass star way up in the cupola. Back in the old days, you could see that light from miles around.”
The next to last stop of the day is Wildcat Manor, a colonial mansion still in the hands of the family of the noted Camden Quaker abolitionist John Hunn. The group follows Mike around to a narrow stairway in the rear. The stairs lead down to a hidden cellar underneath the back of the house, now in a state of semi-collapse. Mike cautions the kids to be careful as they try to peer back into the darkness that once harbored as many as a dozen runaway slaves at a time. “There is rumored to be a tunnel way back in there that leads down to the river that runs along the edge of the property,” he adds, “but there is a need for funding to search for it.”
The final stop is only a half-mile away on the other side of the river from Wildcat Manor. Mike leads the tour onto a fishing pier that juts out slightly into the water. “This spot was once a landing for small steamboats that came up from the Delaware Bay. We think they smuggled runaway slaves that passed through Wildcat Manor onto boats here, which then carried them across the bay and up to Philadelphia.”
It is only a twenty-minute drive to the all-you-can-eat African American-owned soul food restaurant in downtown Dover where Lucreatia has reserved a long table for the hungry group. They are joined by two elders from the Star Hill church, Nelson Williams and his sister Florence. It is Nelson who offers a blessing over the meal. “Most merciful Lord, we give thanks for the food that sustains us. We thank you for your constant protection, and for safely guiding our young pilgrims who have come so far to follow in the footsteps of our sister Harriet Tubman. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
The kids pile their plates high with fried chicken, biscuits, and mashed potatoes and eat like famished wolves. The boys go back for seconds, then thirds, while the girls excuse themselves so they can go out on the avenue and shop for souvenirs. It is their first contact with civilization as they once knew it since leaving home.
After dinner, the groups separate and head off in different directions. The kids manage to locate a basketball court back in Camden where they successfully tire themselves out by nightfall. Tomorrow they will continue their journey northward.
Saturday, April 27. The day begins early. The group has to be packed up and ready to follow Mike, Alyssa, and Lucreatia up the old King’s Highway — now Route 13 — at 8:00 sharp. The plan is to accompany them to two more prominent Underground Railroad sites about thirty miles north of Camden in the town of Odessa and then part ways there, with the Albanians continuing north to Wilmington in order to meet their next guide at the Amtrak station at noon.
Odessa is the home of the Appoquinimink Friends Meeting House, built in 1783. The upstairs Sunday school here provided a secret hiding place for runaway slaves, as did the attic of a mansion on Main Street that once belonged to a wealthy land baron. But the kids are beginning to show signs of historical site overload, and so their teacher is relieved that this morning’s tour is run at a fast pace to insure that the group makes it to downtown Wilmington by 12:00.
They reach the station with five minutes to spare. The students appear not to notice the irony of the presence of an aboveground railroad station in their journey. Nor has it quite occurred to them that they are being passed along from one group of Quakers or free African Americans to another, just like Harriet Tubman a century and a half before them.
They are here to meet Vivian Rahim, the founder of the Harriet Tubman Society in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Vivian was instrumental in getting President George Bush in 1990 to declare March 10 Harriet Tubman Day. And it was Vivian who helped put together the various pieces of the kids’ historical adventure. A resident of Wilmington for many years, she is an expert on the abundant Underground Railroad sites in this port city that was the last stop for Harriet Tubman before reaching freedom in Pennsylvania.
At 12:30 a loudspeaker pages the group. Vivian has called to say that she has been delayed in Washington, D.C. and will be unable to join them. Undeterred, the group decides to go it alone in search of the three remaining sites on its itinerary: the home of Quaker abolitionist Thomas Garrett, who aided Harriet when she reached Wilmington; Garrett’s grave; and the site of the offices of the Pennsylvania Anti-slavery Society, believed to be the final destination of Harriet’s first escape.
As luck would have it, the Amtrak station is only two blocks from the bridge over the Christiana River that was the gateway into 19th-century Wilmington. Many runaway slaves were captured at this vulnerable crossing, and it is not known how Harriet managed to elude discovery here. Armed with a tourist map of the city, next the group climbs the steep hill from the bridge in search of the Quaker Meeting House where Garrett worshipped and was later buried.
But first they have been directed by Vivian to stop in at the museum run by the Wilmington Historical Society. When they arrive, they learn that she has made arrangements for Eric, a young tour guide there, to show the kids the jail cells in the basement of the Wilmington’s Old Town Hall. The building is currently closed to visitors, but Vivian’s influence is evident even in her absence.
Eric leads the group around to the side of the 200-year-old Federal-style structure and down a dark, stone staircase. The air is dank and musty, smelling faintly of mildew. If there are any lights to turn on, their guide ignores them and leads the children down a hallway and into a large cell. The only light is that trickling in from the stairwell and from the gaps in the plank floor overhead. The kids chatter nervously amongst themselves to stave off the growing eeriness.
“Runaway slaves were kept here for weeks, or even months, until their owners came to claim them,” Eric begins. “And there would’ve been twenty or more at a time because thousands of runaway slaves passed through Wilmington and many were caught.”
The chatter has trailed off into stunned silence. This is not a museum exhibit, and it is as though the foot-and-a-half-thick stonewalls still hold echoes of terror and desperation.
“The strange thing is that the slaves would have been able to overhear the conversations of the men who were deciding their fate,” Eric continues, looking upward at the floor of the counsel chamber above. “The sound would’ve carried easily through the cracks in the single layer of wood flooring.”
Victor, age 14, is fascinated by the weight of the huge iron door, which must weigh a ton or more and swings noisily on rusted hinges. He playfully clangs the windowless door closed, and the ten-by- fourteen-foot room turns almost entirely black. Two of the girls cry out in unfeigned alarm. Eric waits for the eyes of the prisoners to adjust to the absence of light and then points out the iron shackle rings fastened around the perimeter of the cell. Shocked minds flash back to the shackles in the Meredith’s store in Bucktown.
Three minutes is all of this reality some of the students can take, and they begin pleading with Victor to let them out. He offers no resistance. When the door is open again, eyes that had become accustomed to the dark take in the full starkness of the surroundings. Eric rhetorically asks the kids if there are ready to leave, and they nearly bowl him over in the hallway in their haste to return to the light of day.
Outside, the group thanks Eric profusely for the surprise tour and soberly makes it way back onto the route to the Quaker Meeting House. Again as luck would have it, they chance upon the historical marker erected in front of the site of Garrett’s home, which turns out to be no longer standing. The large blue and yellow sign credits Garrett, one of the Underground Railroad’s most prolific stationmasters, with helping to save over 2,700 runaway slaves. From their earlier research the students know that Garrett was eventually arrested for his efforts, and that at his sentencing, where the judge fined Garrett the value of all of his worldly property, Garrett had declared, “Even though thou has left me without a dollar, I say to thee and to all in this courtroom, that if anyone knows a fugitive who wants shelter, send him to Thomas Garrett and he will befriend him.”
Several kids take out the disposable cameras that had been donated to them by a downtown Albany photo shop and take snapshots of the marker, with its final sentence announcing that after his death Garrett was carried the four blocks to the cemetery beside the Quaker Meeting House by members of the African American community in Wilmington, as an expression of their deep gratitude. The picture of Quaker simplicity, the old graveyard holds about three hundred short, unadorned headstones. The young teens fan out excitedly in search of Garrett’s. It is fitting that Sarah, who did the bulk of the research on Garrett’s life, is the first to find his grave. She calls her classmates over and someone proposes doing a rubbing, for which Emily magically produces a crayon and several clean sheets of paper.
After a brief stop for pizza on the way down to the train station parking lot, it’s back in the van one last time for the hour-long trip to Philadelphia. Again the destination will be a marker in front of a building that is no longer there. Unfortunately, it is Vivian who knows its exact location. On their way north the group discusses the problem and agrees that they will drive around old Philadelphia in search of the site, and if unsuccessful, they will find a visitor’s center and ask for help.
Two hours of combing the narrow, traffic-clogged streets of the historic section of the city yields dozens of historic markers replete with names such as Franklin, Paine and other key Revolutionary era figures. But William Still, the free African American who manned the office of the Pennsylvania Anti-slavery Society and personally assisted over 700 fleeing slaves, is nowhere to be found. It was Still who first received Harriet Tubman when she arrived in the City of Brotherly Love.
With exasperation spreading through the ranks — it is a hot muggy day and the van has no air conditioning — the group finally manages to find a visitors’ center. Ben, age twelve, and Holley, fourteen, sprint in to inquire about Still, but none of the staff have heard of him. Thankfully, one sympathetic volunteer, seeing the frustration and fatigue evident in the kids’ faces, digs up the phone number of the agency responsible for erecting and maintaining the city’s retinue of historical markers. If anyone should know, they will.
The kids are told that the office doesn’t answer questions over the phone, however, only in person. It is now 4:30 and they close promptly at 5:00, meaning there is just enough time for a mad dash across town through the dense tourist traffic.
The van pulls up in front of the office at 4:50. Again it is Ben and Holley who ask to go after the coveted information. At a little past 5:00 they re-emerge, grinning wildly and waving a yellow Post-it with the address of the marker. Asked what took so long, they report that the gentleman running this operation had never heard of William Still either. But when she flatly refused to leave without the address, Holley recounts, he had little choice but to dig through his computer database until he found it.
The next to last irony of the day: The marker is located exactly one block from the office of historical markers.
Overjoyed that it is so nearby, the remainder of the group bolts the van in mad pursuit of Ben and Holley, who have already disappeared around the corner. Before the kids can catch up to them, the impromptu leaders are already gazing up at a recently erected sign bearing the name of William Still.
The teacher is struck by the single-sentence brevity of the text. It stands in stark contrast to Thomas Garrett’s marker, which contained an entire paragraph. Given that Still had risked far more than his personal effects had he ever been prosecuted for aiding fugitive slaves — free African Americans were sometimes sold into slavery as punishment — it seems unfair that Still be granted less acknowledgement that Garrett. The teacher, however, decides not to distract the kids from their triumph with questions about why they think Stills’ elusive marker is so spare.
In that same moment the young pilgrims have erupted in a spontaneous chorus of cheers and shouts.
“Hooray!!”
“We did it; we reached Philadelphia!”
“We’re free!! We’re free!! We’re not slaves anymore!”
Pedestrians pass by cautiously, clueless as to the cause for such raucous celebration.
Tuesday, April 30. Houseguests in a large home in suburban Washington, the kids ask to be awakened at 6:30 so they can get ready for their meeting with Hillary Clinton. While Harvey, Dearon, and Victor are anxiously ironing their best blue jeans and removing stains from their white leather basketball shoes, Melissa and Holley, whom the class has selected as its spokeswomen, sit heads together at the breakfast table going over the key points they want to make with the former First Lady. The group has been told that the senator’s schedule is very tight — the legislative session is in high gear — and therefore they will have at most five or ten minutes of face time with her.
It is a crystal clear spring morning, much like the one when the group left Albany nearly a week previous. The plan is to take the Metro downtown after breakfast and then keep in cell phone contact with Clinton’s special assistant Eric Woodard, who was also with her at the White House, so that he can let the group know when a window is about to open in his boss’ schedule. Quickly, a tentative 10:30 appointment is pushed back past lunch because of a flurry of activity on the Senate floor. Eric finally suggests that the group join him outside the Senate office building at 1:30, and then walk over to the Capitol steps with him and be ready to meet with Senator Clinton as soon as she has a break.
At 2:30 Eric gets word from the Secret Service that there is about to be a fifteen-minute space between votes. Five minutes later, heads turn upward as Senator Clinton descends the long marble stairs, with two tall, sturdily built men in dark suits a cautious distance behind. Eric ascends, and when he reaches her, gestures down toward the students waiting nervously below.
Senator Clinton greets the children with a broad, warm smile. Somehow she doesn’t appear rushed at all and listens carefully to the children’s names as they introduce themselves in turn.
“I hear you all have been having quite an adventure,” she begins. “And I think that what you are doing is very, very important. I hope more young people get the chance to do what you are doing some day.”
The senator is dressed in a peacock blue suit, under which, the street-savvy boys would later report, she is wearing a skin-tone bulletproof vest. They are also the ones who detect the automatic weapon concealed inside Eric’s suit jacket.
“You know, Harriet Tubman is one of my personal heroes, too. Two years ago, I visited the museum in Auburn, where I understand you all went last fall. Harriet lived such an incredible life.”
Holley, undaunted by being in the presence of one of the world’s best-known women leaders, decides to seize the moment. “We’re here because Harriet Tubman was never paid for her three years of service in the Civil War, and we were wondering if there is anything that you can do about it.”
“I appreciate you coming all this way to bring this matter to my attention. I had no idea,” replies Senator Clinton.
Melissa is next. “She had to sell homemade pies and root beer to the troops in order to support herself while she was down in South Carolina fighting for the Union army.”
“And then, after the war, the government refused to give her the twenty-five dollar a month pension that they paid to other veterans,” adds Ben, backing up the two spokeswomen.
The kids clearly have the senator’s full attention, despite the fact that there is a TV crew waiting to conduct an on-camera interview. She has a look of genuine concern on her face.
Melissa keeps the pressure on. “Harriet was the only American woman ever to lead troops into combat when she led gunboats up a river to capture a plantation and set the slaves free.”
“Harriet Tubman led over 300 slaves to freedom,” chimes in Dearon.
“The whole story is in this petition,” Holley continues, handing Senator Clinton a copy of the document submitted to her husband when he was President.
“Thank you,” replies the senator. “I want you to know that I am going to take this very seriously. I promise that I will have my staff look into the issue and let you know what we can do about it.”
The meeting ends with a portrait of the kids gathered around Senator Clinton on the Capitol steps. Then the group, appropriately pleased with its lobbying efforts, strolls back up Constitution Avenue toward the Smithsonian where they will take in an IMAX film about dinosaurs before heading back out to the suburbs. Their encounter with the modern political system has been a fitting way to bring the kids back to the present after their travels back in time.
Postscript:
True to her word, on Wednesday, May 15, a little over two weeks after meeting with the student delegation from the Albany Free School, Hillary Clinton introduced legislation calling on the United States government to compensate the descendants of Harriet Tubman for her Civil War service.
In a story published subsequently in the Albany Times Union, the senator said, “‘It’s always such an inspiration to see young people curious about our nation’s history and the figures who helped shape the country we live in today. I thank the Albany students who brought this matter to my attention, and I hope we can work together to honor the memory of Harriet Tubman by making sure that this injustice is remedied.”
Photo by John Vachon. Rural school girl, San Augustine County, Texas. April 1943.