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“The Underground Railroad: A Vision For the Future”
Luke Bobo, Professor, Lindenwood University, St. Charles, MO

Introduction: I have a confession to make
I need to come clean at the beginning.  I don’t have an earth shattering, novel and profound vision.  However, I do have a borrowed vision.  You see as a Christian I know what God has called the church (His people) to do.  His vision is my vision.  What is His vision?  His vision for Christians is captured in this statement: “God is forming a new community with people from every tribe, nation, and tongue.”  God wants to see a new community that has people from every walk of life, every race, every color, every ethnicity, every socio-economic level; I can’t do better than His vision.  What does that mean on a very practical or rubber-meet the road level?  I am certainly not naïve – a community with people from every nation, tribe, and language means enduring hard work, it means a lot of false starts, it means an endeavor fraught with misunderstandings, etc.  It means coming alongside each other and fighting for the rights of all human beings. It means seeing and accepting another person’s cultural differences; it means seeing and accepting another person’s way of doing and way of being.  It means for some to give up some of their privileges.  Let me remind us that there are no short cuts in getting to know people who are quite different than we are.  Unlike the Staples’ commercials that offer ‘easy buttons’ for business problems, there are no easy buttons when it comes to building a new community like the one I just briefly described.  The new community is like a marriage between two people from different parts of the globe.  It will take years to get to know one another.  And the great news is that this couple has a lifetime!  Likewise, we have a lifetime to work on this new community together.

Roadmap:

• share a brief history of the underground railroad;
• share what single principle motivated so many to engage in a risky life or death collaboration;
• share some other ‘movements’ in which people worked in concert to stand up for what was right;
• watch a video; and
• then conclude by fleshing out my borrowed vision for the future.

Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was really no railroad at all.  There were no iron tracks in which train cars traveled or tunnels to pass through.  However, technology such as our country’s iron railroad system did greatly aid the Underground Railroad movement.  The Underground Railroad began with a handful of members around the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia at the turn of the nineteenth century.  Slavery existed in Pennsylvania to be sure but as early as 1780, more than 80 years before the Civil War in 1861, this state was the first to pass a [an emancipation] law which stated that while slaves before 1780 were to remain in bondage, those born after that date would automatically become free when they reached their 28th birthday.  By the 1850s the underground [movement] had developed into a diverse, flexible, and interlocking system with thousands of activists (some whose names we know but many we don’t).  The geographical reach of the underground stretched from the upper South to Canada; where many free slaves had homes like General Harriet Tubman as she was called. 

The Underground Railroad was by our standards a loose, informal and secretive network of common and ordinary folk who dared to go against the dominant proslavery attitude and who dared to be part of a small minority group of anti-slavery citizens or staunch abolitionists.  In other words, the underground railroad ran in many ways like a mom and pop store like operation.  In his book, Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America’s First Civil Rights Movement, Bordewich, writes: “The activities of the underground were homely and private – a knock on the door, [a faint light in a bush], a bed offered, a horse saddled, or [food or clothes offered].” 

“In practice, the underground was a model of democracy in action, operating in most areas with a minimum of central direction and a maximum of grassroots involvement, and with only one strategic goal: to provide aid to any fugitive slave who asked for it.”   Those who aided fugitive slaves to their freedom were an unlikely lot of allies or partners.  Bordewich writes, the underground ‘employed’ “…itinerant preachers, teamsters, and peddlers who carried messages for the underground into the South; slaves who themselves never fled but provided information regarding escape routes to those who did; sailors and ships’ stewards who concealed runaways on their vessels; lawyers who were willing to defend fugitives and those who were accused of harboring them; businessmen who provided needed funds, as well as an even wider pool of family members, friends, and fellow parishioners who although they might never engage personally in illegal activity, protected those who did and made it possible for them to continue their work.  Although cell-like [and unsophisticated] in structure, the underground resembled the Communist party much less than it did the Internet.  In sum, “the essential nature of the Underground Railroad lay in the character and motivation of the people who made it work, not in bricks and mortar.”  

Because of the underground’s covert operation, little is precisely known about the actual inter-workings of the underground, but this is what I have surmised happened.  Imagine I was a slave wanting to escape or ‘board a train’ to my freedom.  This message or word would be passed on to a trustworthy and benevolent ‘agent’ who would inform a ‘conductor’ (a person responsible for transporting a runaway – either by boat or carriage or later by train); the ‘conductor; would be told of ‘stationmasters’ along his scheduled route; these stationmasters would provide lodging, a meal or a hiding place until the next ‘train’ of passengers was to depart.  This process would continue until the slave made it to his or her final destination.  While this sounds quite simple, it was quite complex, risky and depended greatly on the integrity of all those involved.  And not every escape attempt proved to be successful.  Those who tried to escape were often captured and beaten and those who helped were ridiculed or even persecuted or run out of town.  Some who aided in the escape of slaves were harassed, fined or even murdered. 

One tragic story will illustrate how on one hand slaves who attempted to escape bordered on fatalism and on the other hand how dangerous it was to attempt to leave slave masters who not only felt betrayed but also who realized how adversely their profits would be affected.  As most of you know, slave labor made slave owners quite wealthy.

On January 28, 1856 Robert and his common-law wife, Margaret, their two young boys and two infant daughters, and Robert’s parents fled from Kentucky to Cincinnati.  Their destination was the home of Margaret’s cousin, Elijah Kite.  Kite went to a benevolent white person to arrange the next departure.  However, on his way home, Elijah was apparently followed because Robert’s slavemaster, Garner and his men had beat him home to a screaming Margaret who said, “Before my children shall be taken back to Kentucky, I shall kill every one of them.”  True to her word, this frantic mother, before anyone realized what she was doing was cutting the throat of her two year old daughter.  She tried to cut the throats of her two boys, but they scrambled, bleeding but not badly hurt, underneath the bed.  Although the story is unclear, Margaret, it is believed threw her baby girl, Cilla, into the river and her little body was never found.  When Margaret was told that her child had likely drowned, Margaret displayed ‘frantic joy.’  Margaret would die at the young age of 25, from typhoid fever.  Her last words to her husband were, “Never marry again in slavery.”

Motivation
Life and death literally hung in the balance for anyone trying to escape and for anyone helping a black fugitive to escape.  So what compelled so many white Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist ministers, lawyers, farmers, clerks, businessmen, housewives, slave owners, and Quakers to become in the words of Bordewich, “radicals, lawbreakers, trespassing upon the dangerous boundaries of race, and undertaking sacrifices that make us wonder if we could do the same?”  What compelled so many to open up their homes and churches (both considered “stations”) to runway black fugitives? 

What motivated some many people from radically different walks of life to collaborate with black slaves to fuel what some have called America’s first racially integrated civil rights movement?  What drove Americans of every hue to serve as conductors, agents, and stationmasters, to risk life, reputation, livelihood and property to help black slaves escape the inhumane horrors slavery?  Why did so many dare to make the infamous words of the Declaration of Independence “all men are created equal” not mere words on the page but a reality?  Why did so many law abiding citizens bend or even break the law to help black slaves to freedom?  Isaac Beck, an underground stationmaster in southern Ohio, provides the simple answer.  Speaking of the underground railroad, Beck said this, “there was no regular organization, no constitution, no officers, no laws or agreement or rule except the ‘Golden Rule’…” It was the Golden Rule - do unto others as you want others to do unto you – that motivated so many to participate in “…one of the most ambitious political undertakings in American history.” The many whites who provided assistance to fugitive slaves who wished to escape to freedom simply asked the question: “if I were in the slave’s predicament, wouldn’t I want someone to help me?”

Because this movement is clouded in secrecy we don’t know just how many people risked their lives (black or white; desperately poor or affluent) but many did because of their belief in the intrinsic worth and dignity of every human being.  This - the intrinsic worth and dignity of every human being - lies at the core of the Golden Rule. 

One Quaker who empathized with the plight of the black slave was Levi Coffin who was called the “president” of the Underground Railroad and who actually provided the model for the administration and operation of the Underground Railroad in the early 1800s.  The horrors of slavery came into razor sharp focus for Levi as a boy who grew up in North Carolina.  As a boy, Levi soon learned that a runaway slave was captured and jailed.  When Coffin saw him next, the slave had a chain riveted around his neck and handcuffs fastened to his wrists. 

“What followed remained forever vivid and unnerving in Coffin’s memory. One end of the chain, riveted to the Negro’s neck, was made fast to the axle of his master’s buggy, [and] then the master sprang in and drove off at a sweeping trot, compelling the slave to run at full speed or fall and be dragged by his neck.  I watched them till they disappeared in the distance, and as long as I could see them, the slave was running.” At that moment, Levi had an epiphany!  He later commented, “the man running for his life behind the carriage was no longer a mere object, a ‘slave’, like a horse or a cow, but a person like Levi himself, with a particular family, a lost home, lost freedom, and lost hope.”  

We have no idea what Levi looked like because no picture of Levi remains; however, we know that Coffin’s parents and grandparents on both sides were opposed to slavery; they were friends to the oppressed.  We also know that Levi was trained by his cousin, Vestal; who both are considered the founders of the earliest known scheme to transport fugitives across hundreds of miles of unfriendly territory to safety in the Free states.  And after Vestal’s untimely death, Levi who would later become a Quaker devoted the next 40 years of his life helping transport fugitives to their freedom.  Levi’s involvement in this risky business was not without its costs.  He was banished to Indiana and then eventually to Cincinnati in 1847.  Before the Civil War brought an end to his work, Coffin would estimate that he had handled some 3,000 fugitives since his early underground work in North Carolina. 

According to Bordewich, Levi and other named and unknown heroes “…discovered each other for the first time as allies in a common struggle, learning to rely on each other not as a master on slave, or child on parent, but as fellow soldiers in a war that most Americans did not yet even know had begun.”  This reliance on each other proved fruitful because modern estimates of the number of fugitives assisted by the underground between 1830 and 1860 ranged from 70,000 to 100,000.  However, if we include the often neglected period of 1800 to 1830 which is said to be the period where the infrastructure for the underground was developed by Levi and countless others, that brings the estimate to more than 150,000 helped to safety to the northern Free states and Canada. 

Was it popular to abet and assist slaves to their freedom?  Of course not, it was against the law and the stakes were tremendously high and those who helped slaves to their freedom were acutely aware of the risks!  And remember whites and blacks assisted so many to their freedom.  Yet in the words of Levi (and I am sure of those who collaborated with him), “The great question was not, is it popular, but is it right.”

Much more can be said about the exploits and heroics of those engaged in America’s first racially integrated civil rights movement but let fast forward and mention other ‘political’ movements – by individuals and organizations – who are guided not by what is popular but what is right.  My hope is to show what fighting injustice looks like using a fairly small sample.

Other Movements

• Hebrew midwives.  Before fast forwarding to today, let’s do a reverse and go back in time and take a moment to consider another human rights movement that even predates the Underground Railroad.  Those familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures are quite aware of this human rights movement.  Because of the sheer number of Israelites was growing and out of fear of an Israelite revolt, Hebrew midwives were commanded by Pharaoh of Egypt to participate in genocide; they were commanded to kill all Hebrew newborn baby boys.  Why did the Hebrew midwives not only lie to Pharaoh but refuse to honor his command or law?  Because they believed in the intrinsic worth and dignity of all human beings. The right thing to do was to save these young lives not murder them.   In short, these Hebrew midwives believed in the Golden Rule and they were willing to risk their own lives to save other human lives.  It was the right thing to do.

 

• Center for Bioethics and Culture of Missouri.  I preside over the Executive Board of the Center for Bioethics and Culture of Missouri.  We seek to educate Missourians on sticky, thorny and morally loaded or pregnant bioethical issues such as euthanasia, abortion, cybernetics and recently the embryonic stem cell issue.  We all write, speak, and teach audiences on such topics.  [Yes, we can fight wrong with ‘paper and pen.’] So, what’s unique about us?  One, we number only 7.  Second, we are comprised of people from different faith traditions: we have a Catholic on our board, two Baptists, several members from the Evangelical Free (or Efree church); we are black and white; we are male and female; we are middle class and upper middle class.  Our occupations range from an Ear, Nose and Throat medical specialist to professors to a pastor to a priest to a housewife.  And why do we place little emphasis on these periphery issues such as race, religious affiliation, and socio-economic status and volunteer our time and money?  Because we believe in the intrinsic worth and dignity of every human being throughout a person’s entire lifecycle - from the womb to the tomb.  We believe that life is sacred at conception to one’s death.

• Bill Devlin.  Meet Mr. Bill Devlin, former director of the Urban Family Council in Philadelphia.  Bill is an A-type energetic, fine dressing white Presbyterian elder. Indeed, Bill is a mover and a shaker and quite radical by some people’s standards.  For example, once on a radio program, Bill mentioned his objection to the homosexual lifestyle.  Afterwards, he received phone calls from angry homosexuals in the Philadelphia area.  Bill did not return fire with fire but rather changed the greeting on his home answering machine to say this: “press 1 for my wife, and if you are a homosexual and were offended by my comments, I would love to invite you to dinner at my home, press 2 and leave your name and number.”  Why would Bill go overboard like this?  Why would Bill move his family from the pristine and safe suburbs of Philadelphia to the crime infested ghetto of Philadelphia?  Why would Devlin refuse to leave the ghetto after being stabbed in his front lawn?  Why?  Because Devlin believes in the intrinsic worth and dignity of every human being and feels uniquely called of God to move close to the action to help fight injustices that African Americans face.  (Again, if Bill were here he would say I am not encouraging all white people who live in the suburbs to relocate to the city; Bill would say, he was uniquely called to do this.)

 

• Peter Singer.  I doubt if many of you have heard the name Peter Singer; if you haven’t’ you should Google his name sometime.  Singer is an Australian.  He is a utilitarian and he is considered the founding father of the modern animal rights movement in the United States.   He seems like a normal fellow on the surface but why would people protest the arrival of a Dr. Peter Singer, Princeton’s leading bioethicist, at public debates? Because these people believe in the intrinsic worth and dignity of every human being (esp., the disabled).  People would protest Singer’s public appearance because he believes that if one had a choice of killing a healthy chimpanzee over a disabled baby or a disabled adult or an elderly person with Parkinson – the choice is a simple one for Singer: kill the person because one can not only have a meaningful relationship with a chimpanzee but these people – a disabled baby, a disabled adult, or an elderly person with Parkinson have effectively lost their social utility.  Instead of offering a benefit or a utility to society, these people are rather a drain on society.

• International Justice Mission.  I first met Gary Haugen, a lawyer by training, in October 1999 in St. Louis.  Gary told me about what he witnessed in the aftermath of what some have called the “African Holocaust”: the systematic massacre in Rwanda where beginning on April 6, 1994 and for the next hundred days, up to 800,000 Tutsis were killed by Hutu militia using clubs and machetes, with as many as 10,000 killed each day.  [See the movie, Hotel Rwanda] Gary tells of going into some churches and seeing a blood line 4 feet off the floor; as evidence of the many bodies that were at one time stacked against the walls.  After seeing this, Gary remarked, “I was never the same again.”  Gary resolved to put his law degree to work for others who are less fortunate, oppressed and exploited.  This led to the founding of the International Justice Mission.  Today this organization sends risk takers to foreign soil like India to help or rescue people forced into horrific working conditions like sweatshops and to rescue those sold into child prostitution.  Why does Gary and his staff travel to foreign countries and go undercover to seek the rescue of voiceless people like this?  Because these people believe in the intrinsic and dignity worth of every human being. 

 

• Partners.   How do you explain the genuine friendship of two men - Roley and Denson - two men radically different from each other, both serving on the outskirts of Nashville, TN?  Roley is a Caucasian and an associate pastor of Christ Community Church, a large PCA church in the suburbs.  Denson is an African American and pastor of First Missionary Baptist Church in the ghetto. Roley grew up as a “country club kid” in the suburbs and now lives in the “hood”; Denson formerly participated in the Black Panther Party and now lives in the suburbs.  What brings these two men from quite diverse backgrounds together? Answer - A shared interest in disinherited people; a genuine interest in the plight and rescue of the poor.  Both men will quickly say, working together on thorny and uncomfortable issues such as fatherless homes, racial reconciliation, and ridding the city of illicit drugs is not free of mess and filth.  On the contrary, doing the right thing or living by the Golden Rule is ugly and messy work.  Again, there are no short cuts.

These are just 6 snapshots that represent a few people and/or organizations putting into practice the Golden Rule or doing what is right to fight injustices (like racism, ‘structural’ or institutional evils and other societal ills) at home and abroad.  Now, let’s watch a video (or part of a video).

• Show ABC’s Prime Time, True Colors, video.  I first saw a clip of this video at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis at a conference that I helped organized.  This was a conference on race in America.  I have used it in a class I co-taught at Covenant since then.  This is a documentary produced by ABC’s Prime Time.  It speaks for itself.  As you watch this, ask these questions: 1) does racism still exist? and 2) if this was happening in your town and you got wind of it, what is the right thing to do?

 

Conclusion
Here is my borrowed vision for the future fleshed out.  I envision a world that is actively engage in these four imperatives:

• Teach American History.  That sounds fairly simple. However, there’s a twist.  The history of the Underground Railroad is not black history nor is it white history but rather it is American history.  For the events related to the Underground Railroad were performed by Americans of every hue.  Saying that leads me to say that I am passionately against having Black History Month.  Here’s a better way: Why not teach history as history?  This means to teach history as it happened.  History is not monolithic but it is a beautiful mosaic.  American history captures the best and worst deeds of every American – Black, native, Asian, Hispanic, Italian, and European.  So, my vision includes history being taught as it happened with a fair and equitable discussion of the people, places, and events regardless of the person’s skin color, ethnicity, nationality, etc.  Here’s the point: To teach history that is devoid of many history makers – whether rich or poor; whether educated or not educated; whether black or white – is to teach a biased and incomplete history.  One of the benefits of teaching history as I have proposed is that our students will get a fuller picture of history and perhaps, second, our students will learn to appreciate the contributions and conditions of every American!  Just maybe if history was taught this way that one’s cultural awareness and sensitivity IQ will increase.  Perhaps, if history were taught this way – that includes the best and worst of all humanity – maybe racism and ignorance will diminish!  (New City School in St. Louis teaches history this way.  See http://www.newcityschool.org/.)

 

• Avoid judging a book by its cover.  We are all guilty of judging or evaluating a person based on the externals (skin color, dress, grooming, etc.) before that person opens his mouth or before we get to know the person’s story.  The movie Crash dramatically and beautifully portrays this human tendency in us.  A friend of mine often asks a person she doesn’t know, “Tell me your story.”  By hearing someone’s story, you leave the outskirts and are ushered in to someone’s context or world.  By hearing someone’s story, you get up close and personal.  By hearing someone’s story we can develop empathy for others instead of rushing to a premature conclusion about someone.  By hearing someone’s story, we can better understand a person as an individual and not by what we often hear or by what is portrayed in the media.  Again, I am not naïve about this; what I am suggesting will not only take time but will also require us to carve out ‘unhurried time’ together.  Time to get below the surface; time to really get to know one another, time to hear one’s fears, dreams, and goals.  This may mean of course having a meal together in the person’s home or in your home.  Will this be awkward initially, you bet.  But we must give it time like any relationship.

• Use what you got.  Every person here tonight has ‘resources.’  Some more, some less.  I recently did a talk on Oprah and while I don’t agree with her on many fronts; I do admire how she uses her influence and affluence to help others.  Of course, we are not Oprah nor do we have the influence and wealth she has; yet, every person in this room has some influence and some affluence.  Enough influence and affluence to effect change for someone.  Your influence and affluence are valuable resources that can be used to help someone less fortunate.

 

• Stand up for what is right.  The monk and reformer Martin Luther stood alone against the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church in the 1500s.  His unpopular outspokenness against the RCC, led to the Protestant Reformation.  Many whites and blacks partnered together in the Underground Railroad effort and stood up and defied the prevalent pro-slavery attitude.  Nelson Mandela and many others stood up against the horrors of apartheid.  Dr. Martin Luther King and many others stood up against the mistreatment of African Americans in this country.  Standing up against the injustices of his day was no walk in the park for Luther; standing up against the injustices of their day was no walk in the park for the many partners in the Underground Railroad effort; standing up against the injustices of his day was no walk in the park for Dr. King; and standing up against the injustices of his day was no walk in the park for Mandela.  Consider this:

• Martin Luther was excommunicated from the church and was haunted down like a ‘runaway slave’;
• Those whites who partnered with blacks to serve the desires of slaves for freedom, were ridiculed and harassed;
• King was assassinated; and
• Mandela spent several years in prison on Robbens Island (South Africa’s equivalent of our Alcatraz).  I actually stood in Mandela’s prison cell when I traveled to Cape Town in July 2005 (my daughter who traveled with me took the picture).  On this island, the conditions were atrocious and inhumane.  Besides sleeping on a concrete floor on cardboard during the frigid winter months, these men did not have access to an indoor toilet.  Rather they were given a bucket to relieve themselves.  Standing up for right comes with a price.  I hope for a world where people will pay the price.

 

Those in audience who are Christians will recognize that I have said nothing that is foreign to you.  For what I have shared with you is God’s vision for His world.  The Underground Railroad and these other movements provide us with a template or blueprint.  If we could just apply these templates (with some tweaks of course) to the many ills and injustices that plague our city, our country, and our world then could you imagine what a radically different world this would be?  I hope you have noticed my repeated use of the phrase “the intrinsic worth and dignity of every human being.”  Ridding our society of racism (ageism, sexism), standing up for the rights for every human being (regardless of color, nationality, station in life, etc.) starts with the firm belief that every person you meet has inherent worth and dignity!!!!