This brought an extremely important issue to the table. An issue that resonates with the raison d’etre of the Underground Railroad and the Abolitionist movement: the matter of inequality by virtue of race.
Racism in the Antebellum North
“Fugitive slaves who succeeded in making their way to the free states quickly learned that they were not yet in the Promised Land. Work was hard to come by [and] wages were ‘unusually low and uncertain,’ ” Gara wrote in Liberty Line. In addition, he pointed out, free blacks from the South were known to comment on the greater social distance between blacks and whites in the North, and on the greater likelihood of being insulted on account of their color there. “Certainly,” Gara concluded, “prejudice against Negroes was common throughout the nation, and there is no reason to believe that at that time such prejudice was stronger in the South than in the North.”
A number of historians, notably Benjamin Quarles and Charles Blockson, and more recently Keith Griffler, have since Gara documented the racism that existed even among abolitionists, and have pointed out that the early and traditional stories of the Underground Railroad were mainly written by whites and presented a decidedly white perspective. As a result, the traditional view of the Underground Railroad underemphasized the contributions of blacks.
Failure to Tell the Black Version of the Underground Railroad
The failure to tell the story of black participation occurred because of a number of circumstances related not only to a white recitation of the story but to black demographics and culture, which Cheryl LaRoche discusses in her recent dissertation, On the Edge of Freedom. This study of five small antebellum black communities in the Midwest that were founded by emancipated slaves shows that blacks during this period desired to isolate and insulate themselves from the white community because of its racism, were much more itinerant, and depended on oral rather than written tradition.
Greatest Contribution of Liberty Line
Gara himself believes the greatest contribution of Liberty Line was that proper emphasis be given to black participation. In the 1996 preface to the reprint of Liberty Line, he wrote:
"As I studied the narratives or autobiographies of former slaves, I was struck with their active roles in their own escapes. These records contrasted with their passive roles in the legendary accounts . . . . Placing the fugitive slaves at the center of their struggle for freedom was the major contribution of The Liberty Line."
Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right
However, as with many wrongs that are rectified, sometimes it can be taken to the other extreme. Some researchers and professionals involved in the study of the Underground Railroad have in recent years sought to ignore the contributions of white men, those like Levi Coffin, Eber Pettit, William Cockrum, and others whose personal narratives took a decidedly white perspective, and by modern standards a paternalistic attitude that some might characterize as racist.
For instance, the now defunct New York State Underground Railroad Heritage Trail, for a time, required black participation for designation as an official Underground Railroad site. This was sometimes almost impossible in sections of northern New York where there were very few blacks but which had very strong abolitionist populations with documented evidence of aid to fugitive slaves.
Another example of this was a fairly recent radio interview with a local historian in Ohio who stated that the Underground Railroad was conducted mainly by blacks with the support of a few white women.
Of course, it is only natural that blacks would be more inclined to aid fugitive slaves than whites. Not only did they share the same racial and usually the same cultural backgrounds, but they often had at some point in their lives personally experienced the horrors of slavery. Nevertheless, abolitionism was a religious, evangelical movement that consumed the lives of many whites. When one considers that in 1860 there were about 70 times as many whites as there were free blacks in the United States, and that the few free blacks had very little of the wealth needed to support the Underground Railroad, it is ludicrous to discount the contributions of white men.
Interracial Cooperation in the Underground Railroad
Overall, what emerges, is interracial cooperation. This can be seen in the operation of most of the major urban vigilance committees like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, and lesser groups like those in Cincinnati; Wilmington, Delaware; New Bedford, Massachusetts; Chester County, Pennsylvania; and Albany, Syracuse, and Rochester, New York. Much was dependent on time and place, and who lived where and when. In New York and Cincinnati, it began solely black and grew more interracial; in Detroit, it was directed by blacks, with some white associates.
This should not suggest that blacks and whites worked together in perfect harmony. Racial prejudice was prevalent even among abolitionists and diehard agents of the Underground Railroad. Nevertheless, some had close relationships, like Miller McKim and William Still, and Gerrit Smith, John Brown, and Frederick Douglass.
See Larry Gara's Liberty Line A Critical Assessment
Larry Gara, Liberty Line (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1996 edition).
Keith Griffler, Frontline of Freedom (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004).
Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969).
William Still, The Underground Railroad (1872; reprint, Chicago: Johnson Brothers, 1971).
Tom Calarco - Tom Calarco is the author and editor of five books on the Underground Railroad, the latest, Places of the Underground Railroad, to be ...
