Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Janifer LaRoche
Keyword(s):  
Black Churches ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
Free Black ◽  
Parallel Connections

This book explores the free Black communities in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio and their associations with the Underground Railroad. Focusing on the Black settlements in Rocky Fork and Miller Grove in Illinois, Lick Creek in Indiana, and Poke Patch in Ohio, it considers how the Underground Railroad movement secretly operated in conjunction with free Blacks and their historic Black churches. The book uses vital elements of what it calls the “geography of resistance” to examine the mechanisms of escape from slavery from an alternative perspective. By drawing on geography in combination with archaeology, community and church histories, and traditional Underground Railroad stories, the book makes visible unrecognized parallel connections between free Black communities and larger better-known abolitionist centers.

Memory Making on Parade

2019 ◽  
pp. 48-72
Author(s):  
Susan T. Falck
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Free Black ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Union Soldiers

This chapter clarifies that black communities experienced emancipation traditions in different ways. Given the large proportion of blacks in Natchez, and the region’s well-established free black community, it seemed probable that Natchez would experience a robust emancipation tradition. That was not the case. The grand 1867 Fourth of July parade in Natchez organized by the Union League drew a large crowd of African Americans, suggesting the beginnings of a bold emancipation tradition. Instead, public emancipation celebrations dwindled. By the time of the 1871 Decoration Day observance, leaders stressed reconciliation and a tribute to Confederate as well as Union soldiers, a far different message heard only four years earlier. The erosion of a black emancipation tradition resulted from the unusually close ties that existed between Natchez free blacks and white elites, and the fear among free blacks that it was in their best political interests to suppress such traditions.

Clandestine Pursuits

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-126
Author(s):  
Rebecca Yamin ◽  
Donna J. Seifert
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Site Conditions ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Free Black

Prostitution and the reasons for turning to it are contrasted with other clandestine activities done for other reasons. The chapter is organized around several subjects: resistance in the nineteenth century, the Underground Railroad, and resourcefulness in the eighteenth century. Archaeological examples of nineteenth-century resistance include defiance in the workplace at factories and railroad sites and archaeological evidence of prison escape attempts and site conditions behind the walls. The difficulty of finding legitimate evidence of the Underground Railroad is discussed, archaeologically identified hiding places are described, and the potential of using archaeology to reveal the participation of otherwise unknown free black communities is considered. Evidence for eighteenth-century resourcefulness includes in-the-ground evidence of smuggling as well as the presence of illegitimately acquired artifacts and the underwater recovery of two pirate ships.

Family, Church, Community

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Janifer LaRoche
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Black Churches ◽  
Black Families ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Church And Community ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
American Churches ◽  
Church Organizations

This chapter explores the roles played by family, church, and community in the Black Underground Railroad movement. By mapping Black settlements, it clarifies and exposes the relationship between African American churches, settlements, and historic Underground Railroad routes. It shows how Black families sustained an important family organizational structure that drove the Underground Railroad. It explains how African American communities connected through family relations and intermarriage, church organizations, benevolent societies, and the fraternal structure of the Prince Hall Masons. It considers how maintaining family connections motivated escape from slavery, particularly when imminent sale threatened to break up the family. Finally, it highlights the ways that Black churches and their ministers helped free Blacks, or self-liberated men and women, to succeed in winning freedom for themselves and their loved ones.

The Geography of Resistance

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Janifer LaRoche
Keyword(s):  
Free Blacks ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Black Experience ◽  
Physical Suffering ◽  
Bad Weather

This chapter examines escape routes, churches, iron forges and furnaces, and waterways that make up the pathways to freedom and “the geography of resistance.” It considers the concept of freedom as a place by exploring the connections between freedom and the landscape, and between Black communities and the Underground Railroad. It discusses the obstacles that captives escaping slavery had to hurdle, such as losing the challenges of the terrain and bad weather, betrayal, physical suffering, and slave catchers. It also looks at houses as artifacts of the Underground Railroad in the landscape, along with the patterns of rural Black settlements and how most free Blacks often found themselves saddled with the least desirable land. It argues that the landscape is an intimate component of the Black experience, providing crucial pathways out of slavery, and that generations of escapees on the Underground Railroad turned to the sheltering anonymity of the land to conceal their journey.

Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Janifer LaRoche
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Landscape Features ◽  
Fugitive Slaves ◽  
Free Black ◽  
African American Communities

This enlightening study employs the tools of archaeology to uncover a new historical perspective on the Underground Railroad. Unlike previous histories of the Underground Railroad, which have focused on frightened fugitive slaves and their benevolent abolitionist accomplices, this book focuses instead on free African American communities, the crucial help they provided to individuals fleeing slavery, and the terrain where those flights to freedom occurred. This book foregrounds several small, rural hamlets on the treacherous southern edge of the free North in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. It demonstrates how landscape features such as waterways, iron forges, and caves played a key role in the conduct and effectiveness of the Underground Railroad. Rich in oral histories, maps, memoirs, and archaeological investigations, this examination of the “geography of resistance” tells the new, powerful, and inspiring story of African Americans ensuring their own liberation in the midst of oppression.

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