Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad : the Geography of Resistance Cheryl Janifer LaRoche

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

LaRoche, Cheryl Janifer.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Underground Railroad--Indiana.

Underground Railroad.

Underground Railroad--Illinois.

Underground Railroad--Ohio.

Fugitive slaves--United States--History.

Fugitive slaves.

African Americans--History--19th century--Sources.

African Americans.

Antislavery movements--United States--History.

Antislavery movements.

African Americans--Antiquities.

Excavations (Archaeology)--United States.

Excavations (Archaeology).

Physical Description:

xviii, 232 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 2013.

Summary:

"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, Cheryl LaRoche 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 study foregrounds several small, rural hamlets on the treacherous southern edge of the free North in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. LaRoche 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. "-- Provided by publisher.

"In Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad, Cheryl LaRoche brings the tools of archaeology to the study of the Underground Railroad movement. Unlike previous histories of the Underground Railroad, which have focused on frightened fugitive slaves and their benevolent abolitionist accomplices, this study examines the interactions of those fleeing slavery, the Black communities that helped them, and the terrain where their struggles occurred. LaRoche's approach foregrounds the African Americans who were at the forefront of the movement, or "on the front-line of freedom." Small rural pre-Civil War free Black border communities were conduits for escape. As the first points of entry into the treacherous southern regions of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, Black communities in the southernmost counties bordering the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers were positioned to offer sanctuary to anyone able to escape slavery. LaRoche explores oral family and personal histories, memories, documents, maps, memoirs and archaeological investigations of the historic communities of Rocky Fork and Miller Grove in Illinois, Lick Creek, Indiana, and Poke Patch, Ohio. These untold stories of the Underground Railroad reveal a geography of resistance viewed through local African-American strategies for equal rights and social justice"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Rocky Fork, Illinois: oral tradition as memory

Miller Grove, Illinois: linking a free black community to the Underground Railroad

Lick Creek, Indiana: a Quaker connection

Poke Patch, Ohio: a different route

The geography of resistance

Rethinking African American migration

Family, church, community: pillars of the black Underground Railroad movement

Faith and fraternity

Destination freedom

Appendix: ministers chart.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 191-218) and index.

ISBN:

9780252079542 (paper)

025207954X (paper)

9780252038044 (hardback)

0252038045 (hardback)

OCLC:

843858221