Posted on 02/02/2009 12:40:23 AM PST by nickcarraway
The pen is powerful, says Carl B. Westmoreland, curator and senior adviser to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. He believes it is here to tell the story of the inter-American slave trade to future generations.
The "pen" that Westmoreland refers to is a 19th-century slave pen recovered from a farm in Kentucky. Since the Freedom Center opened five years ago, 900,000 visitors have walked through it.
The slave pen is the center's largest artifact, and it looms in the lobby beyond the reception area like the proverbial elephant in the room. Too powerful and too symbolic to be ignored.
Two stories high and made of logs and river rock flooring, the structure was a holding pen for humans waiting to be shipped from Dover, Ky., to cities like Natchez, Miss., or New Orleans when the market price better suited the slave traders. Some slaves stayed for days, others for months.
Stepping inside, the height of the single room soars above. In the openness it is difficult to imagine what it was like filled with slaves. The interpreter explained that males were kept in shackles on the second floor - more of a loft-like area - and women stayed on the first floor close to the fireplace so they could cook. The names of some of the slaves who passed through this very pen are recorded on a slab inside the door. These were recovered from the ledgers of the slave traders.
Slave pen's symbolism Westmoreland spent 3 ½ years uncovering the story of the pen. "There is a hidden history right below the surface, part of the unspoken vocabulary of the American historic landscape. It's nothing but a pile of logs, yet it is everything."
The symbolism indeed is everything. As our tour continued through the center from one floor to another, from one of the three pavilions to the next, the pen always reappeared, just seen from a different view. It is a tangible reminder, the interpreter said, of why people of all races need to work together for freedom.
Looking at freedom with fresh eyes is the premise of this wonderful yet haunting center on the Ohio River. As my American history memory serves, crossing the Ohio was the last leg in a dangerous journey to freedom for slaves.
One of the most interesting stories related by our guide concerned a slave named Henry "Box" Brown from Richmond, Va.
Brown was so frantic to be free, he climbed into a box and mailed himself from Richmond to Philadelphia, from slavery to freedom. Seeing a box like the one Brown used gave me pause. Being able to climb into a box like the one he used, which the center encourages, allows visitors to share his desperation.
Jackie Sheckler Finch of Indianapolis was touring the center the day I visited. She told me that she hoped to take her 16-year-old grandson to visit someday. "The message that 'Freedom is not free' needs to be kept alive, and I think it would benefit him to see firsthand some of the history of this period."
Cornerstones of freedom The Freedom Center is one of a handful of new museums in a category called "cultural centers." Others include the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn., the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
The three pavilions that compose the center are named after the three cornerstones of freedom: courage, cooperation and perseverance. Each offers its own experience through film, interactive exhibits and galleries. Along the pathways to freedom, visitors meet abolitionists from the past, Everyday Freedom Heroes from modern times and, sadly, reminders of human rights and slavery issues that plague our world today.
The Freedom Center is an inspirational stop in a historic city. In the 19th-century, Cincinnati was a beacon of hope across the Ohio River; today, because of the Underground Railroad museum, it still is.
If you go The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is at 50 E. Freedom Way in Cincinnati. Open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; $12 for adults. Web site: www.freedomcenter.org.
A press release from the Slavery Museum in my home town.
When the Slavery Museum was pitched to the city, it was supposedly going to bring people from the other side of the planet. Oh, it was going to be SO popular.
They have downsized the staff twice, and several times come to the taxpayer to get more money. The majority of the people visiting are schoolkids who are BROUGHT to the museum to be "educated", not people who are going for fun.
My city council has spent decades bickering like spoiled children about our Riverfront, which was going to be "really something." What did we get? We gave tax money to the Bengals (who, honest to God, play TEN WHOLE GAMES in our stadium EVERY YEAR!) We helped the rich fat cats who own the Reds with our tax dollars. And we continue to throw money at this. Kentucky has a fabulously successful riverfront, filled with fun things people want to do...movies, shops, restaurants. We have two partially filled sports venues, and the Slavery Museum.
In fact, pursuing "the Banks Project" or our side of the river, the city had planned out shops and malls on our side. Last year it developed that a piece of land GIVEN to the museum for a dollar as a location for "future expansion" was better spent on a million dollar restaurant, the museum tried to sell it back to the city...for a million dollars. When talk radio made them look like a bunch of ungrateful children, they finally relented and returned it to the city.
Shortly after that, the Museum's new reason for their financial crisis was that the million dollar entranceway into their subsidized museum was facing the wrong way...and the thing that would REALLY make them popular was if the city would give them a million dollars to move it to the other side of the building.
We have a fabulously successful Children's Museum linked with a valuable Natural History Museum where I live, and even though thousands upon thousands of people intentionally bring there kids there for fun, we still subsidize part of it with taxes. If these popular attractions require funding, how did we ever get sold on the idea that this museum, with it's limited White Guilt appeal was going to stand on it's own?
This is what the museum is all about. Wouldn't you rather be told that "being able to climb into a box like the one he used allows visitors to share his expectations of a new life"? Why in the world would I chose to go to "the desperation museum"?
I’d be willing to bet that the money the museum is begging for will be miraculously found in the Obammunist “stimulus package.”
Since it was still being escavated, the area was surrounded by glass. Very cool.
The museum is just about ready to close its doors due to lack of attendance. The next stop on this journey will probably be as a casino if Ohio ever passes a bill to legalize gambling.
This place is a prime example of why Cincinnati is in the shape it's in today.
I can’t agree with public funds being used to erect a huge commercial for-profit enterprise like a football stadium, and too many public works projects don’t end up yielding the tax revenues that are projected. But for the preservation of a piece of our history, the relatively small amounts are an appropriate expenditure from the exchequeur. Yes, even if the original estimates of public interest are overstated in order to get the project funded. I don’t care. Those who don’t know history are condemned to repeat it, and the evidences of our past teach, inspire, correct, chasten, and direct us.
Cinci need to bring back “WKRP”. That would get more attention I think.......
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Thanks nickcarraway. |
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Just curious if that was mentioned.
My husbands family, Quakers on the Pennsylvania/Maryland border, were part of the underground railroad that risked their lives to save the lives of slaves.
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