JASON: I have travelled today to meet with Abraham Barbury in his studio in Chicago, Illinois.
As he rises to greet me, he unfolds his six-foot, still slim frame. He is looking at me with the watery sad eyes of an 80 year old black man who has lived a lot and seen a lot. His wiry white hair is in contrast to his wrinkled, dark skin. He is obviously of mixed race. So maybe I should start there. I want to know a bit about his ancestors on both sides – his father's side, and his mother's side.
ABRAHAM: "So, on my father's side I can trace his family for six generations all the way back to the early 1800s. They were slaves of course, and the early generations lived in various places, various plantations I should say, but always in the state of North Carolina, in the Charlotte area. It is not as difficult to trace as you might think because most slave owners running a farm or business kept good records of their accounts. Yes, good records of their "assets" they would say.
My father's grandfather, also an Abraham, left North Carolina in 1849 and settled in Arkansas. I should say he fled late at night, escaping all on his own, slipping away from his plantation south of Charlotte. He was on foot, travelling mostly at night and hiding during the daytime. It was a dangerous journey over some weeks. Dangerous because there were armed bounty hunters that would get a good reward for capturing an escaped slave. And if he survived, he would be returned to his owner, and his life would be an even greater hell than before.
There were some sympathetic people that gave shelter and food at "stations" along what was called the "Underground Railroad". There were several routes heading west to the Mississippi and some that were even longer that went to the north all the way to Canada. You see France, and therefore New France, had abolished slavery years before in 1848 and if you could get across the Mississippi to Arkansas, to New France, you were a free man. The Underground Railroad had been running even longer to Canada since they abolished slavery in 1834. So, the Railroad provided food and safety as well as the routing for each night's travel. They knew the best spots to cross the river; places where the river curved to the east and the current would take you to the western shore. You would cling or be tied to anything that would float, and pray for the best. If you survived the journey, you were a free man. Penniless and without friends or family, but a free man. Some travelled onward to New Spain and Mexico since they had abolished slavery in 1839. But you still needed to be careful. There were bounty hunters operating in these lands that would kidnap people they thought to be escaped slaves and return them to New England. In some cases they captured free blacks t
Then there was the story of Harriet Tubman. She was born on a plantation in Maryland to two enslaved parents and was given the name Aramite Ross by the plantation owner. She worked for her owner for some twenty odd years and was beaten many times before she finally escaped. She left her husband John Tubman behind and managed to live safely in hiding using assumed identities for years.
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New America: How America Could Have Happened. An Alternate History
Fiksi SejarahWhat if North America today was divided up the way the original colonial powers had settled it. With the English all along the Atlantic coast. The French down the middle along the Mississippi watershed. The Spanish in the west all along the Pacifi...