A Different Liberty Bell

“It didn’t have to be this way – I didn’t have to get caught. Why didn’t I travel the Railroad from the start? Perhaps our grief numbed our minds and blurred our caution? Perhaps my white skin gave me the illusion of protection? But there is no protection. No one is safe from slavery. It destroys people, as it did Cass. It breaks apart families, as it did Emma’s… and now mine. I’m learning terrible lessons, I who like playing teacher.”(North by Night by Katherine Ayres, pp. 172-173)

In the historical novel North by Night, the ramifications of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act come to life through the journal entries and letters of one white teenage girl in Ohio. South Central Los Angeles teacher Melissa Minkin took it one step further by designing her Fund for Teachers fellowship to follow the northern trail of the Underground Railroad from Ohio to Canada, mirroring the journey of characters in the novel.

“My fellowship underscored the importance of integrating history, particularly the history of African Americans before the Civil War, into my language arts curriculum,” said Melissa. “I experienced first-hand the power of individual stories, of people’s personal experiences, and the ways they help make history come alive.”

“Until my fellowship, I believed that America’s success and ability to complete in the global economy were largely the result of American hard work. I realize now that a large percentage of that work was done under duress, by people of African descent who were not paid, not given a choice and received no
benefit for their labors – all the while enduring horrific physical and emotional abuse,” said Melissa. “While only some people traded and owned other humans, many more benefited from the institution through their roles in banking, insurance, shipping, and other professions that served the slaveholding economy and those who prospered, directly and indirectly, from it.”

Interested in free lesson plans Melissa and her traveling partner developed based on her fellowship?  Click here to subscribe to her blog and here to obtain her Underground Railroad resources.

Melissa’s educational road trip began in Cincinnati at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.  The Center provided an important foundation of content and context for her fellowship, setting the stage for rest of her trip.  Her journey then took her on an Ohio River cruise, and through the Ohio River Valley, the primary setting of North By Night. In addition to talking with locals about their family histories in the region, she was able to take many photographs and video clips, to help give her students a sense of this geographical region, and what it might have looked like in the 1850s, so different from Los Angeles.

One of the highlights of the trip was the hidden gems she learned about from locals she met on the journey. In addition to Melissa’s planned stops, a local historian encouraged her to visit Ripley, a town on the Ohio River which played a key role in helping freedom seekers escape from Kentucky to Ohio, and then north to Canada.

Heading north herself, Melissa then stopped in Detroit, to visit another key cultural institution, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, and to see for herself the short distance between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario in Canada where many runaways crossed to freedom.

Another local she talked with during her travels encouraged a visit to Buxton in Ontario, a community founded in 1849 for Blacks who were fleeing slavery in the US.  The Buxton National Historic Site and Museum was rich with artifacts and stories from the history of the community, which is still home to several families with roots dating back to its founding, including two museum staff she met. The highlight of the fellowship, according to Melissa, was arriving at The Liberty Bell of Freedom, rung by slaves who safely crossed the Ohio River. (Buxton is the setting for two Christopher Paul Curtis books, Elijah of Buxton and The Madman of Piney Woods.)

Melissa’s journey continued as she drove across Ontario, Canada, re-entering the US through Upstate New York. She visited the Susan B. Anthony’s home and the Women’s Rights National Historic Park. She ended her travels in New York City with a walking tour of Lower Manhattan’s key historic sites of slavery and the Underground Railroad.  Lower Manhattan, then New Amsterdam, was built by enslaved Africans brought to the New World by the Dutch. She learned that Wall Street was initially a wall, built by enslaved Africans to protect the Dutch settlers from local indigenous people.  Africans lived outside the wall, as a buffer between the native people and the settlers.  She also visited the African Burial Ground National Monument. A somber and sacred space outside the boundaries of New Amsterdam, both free and enslaved Africans were buried here between the 1690s and 1794.  The burial grounds were rediscovered in 1991 as a result of the planned construction of a Federal office building.

Melissa says her students are troubled by the racial injustice they see in their communities and on TV. “They wonder about the choices that that bystanders and allies make, and the reasons that some people take enormous risks to stand up for justice. This fellowship helped me gain more context and background about slavery and the Underground Railroad. I feel better prepared to help my students understand and grapple with questions about this historical period and our modern era.”

As an English teacher at Edison Middle School, Melissa acknowledges that the standard narrative taught about the Underground Railroad largely omits the prominent role that people of African descent played in helping each other seek freedom. The fellowship made of her aware of other gaps in history, as well.

Melissa’s students are using the photographs, videos and artifacts she accumulated on her fellowship as source material for multimedia projects and an original film adaption of North by Night using a class set of iPads and the Adobe Voice app. Students will debut their work in a culminating event for the school community on the themes of slavery, the Civil War and the Underground Railroad.

“As 7th and 8th graders, my students are differentiating from their parents and developing their own sense of self. As such, they are grappling with deep and important questions about injustice and morality. This fellowship helped me and my students make connections across time and space, as we continue to wrestle with the essential challenges of being human.”

Melissa is a National Board Certified Teacher, a Writing Project Fellow, and a UCLA Teacher Initiated Inquiry Grant Awardee. You can read about her fellowship educational road trip on her website, and download some lesson plans about the Underground Railroad at www.teacherhacks.net. She is also
accessible on Twitter at @MelissaMinkin.