Tunnel door to the Underground Railroad in Covington, Kentucky
Underground Railroad’s Grand Central Station
Geography matters. Cincinnati is the Underground Railroad’s Grand Central Station due to it being one of three primary routes to freedom from the South. One ran along the East Coast. A second along the Mississippi River. The most heavily traveled route, however, was crossing the Ohio River from Northern Kentucky to Cincinnati, where it is estimated that 30,000 people escaped bondage.
Cincinnati was a favored destination because people who escaped slavery lessened their chances of being re-captured. After all, the Ohio River formed a boundary that horses could not easily cross.
Perhaps the most compelling draw for escaped slaves was the scores of Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky abolitionists who organized an expansive Underground Railroad. Those abolitionists included the great Levi Coffin, an Anglo-American who was said to be the President of the Underground Railroad because he helped over 3,000 enslaved people reach freedom.
Another key figure, John Rankin, a white Presbyterian preacher and father of Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote Uncle Tomโs Cabin. Those white brothers, along with freed slaves like John Parker and James Brawley, provide irrefutable evidence that the forefront of the anti-slavery movement was Black and White.
Although most Blacks traveled through Cincinnati and Ohio to points north, many stayed. In 1829, African-American citizens comprised 10% of the city population. They lived in the Bucktown district.
In 1834, the โGreat Lane Debatesโ over slavery were held in Cincinnati at Lane Theological Seminary. Many historians regard these debates in Cincinnati as helping to shape President Abraham Lincoln’s position on slavery, ultimately leading to his signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863.
Cincinnati, like Baltimore in another border state, felt the nation’s “bipolar disorder” concerning slavery more profoundly than most. With Fugitive Slave Laws at their behest, pro-slavery economic interests sent bounty hunters to Cincinnati to retrieve people who escaped slavery.
This bipolar disorder influenced many American whites and certainly most European immigrants to develop a complex set of emotions about free African Americans. The typical sentiment became they are free in this Northern state and have rights, but I donโt want them competing for my job or as my neighbor.
Concerned about the increasing number of free African Americans so close to the border, some European Americans tried to force African Americans to move out of the city or back to Africa. When African Americans did not heed this sentiment in the 1840s, a riot took place. Several Blacks were killed. Many African Americans fled to points north and Canada.
Despite their precarious geographic location, Black Cincinnatians pushed forward in religion, education, and commerce. With its sophisticated network of conductors, proximity north of the Ohio River, and defiant free African Americans, Cincinnati was the Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad. So you know the party was on when the Civil War ended in April 1865.
Fast forward to today. Visitors of all colors can experience the wealth of Underground Railroad sites and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Doing their part to make things better, major corporations have contributed money and manpower to make the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center a reality. Like the original Underground Railroad, the collective efforts of people of all colors made the center a reality.
Such collective action is a strong foundation for a more truthful and cathartic telling of this critical chapter in our nationโs history, empathy for our unhealed wounds in the African Diaspora, and a degree of reconciliation.
