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Chapter 9 Destination Freedom Free Blacks carried out much of the clandestine work of the Underground Railroad as they probed the meaning of freedom in pre–Civil War America. Covert works of African Americans drove the efforts inside one of the world’s most successful resistance movements. Placing the Underground Railroad inside Black communities sheds a different light on the culminating phase of more than two centuries of escapes by people of color. Whether urban or rural, Black settlements positioned at the borders between northern and southern states or at other critical junctures acted as the first line of freedom while simultaneously offering sanctuary to escaping captives. Each of the sites in this study contains different landscape features that define the geography of resistance.The communities of Rocky Fork, Brooklyn , and Alton reflect the nature of the Underground Railroad along the Mississippi River in south-central Illinois.The geography of resistance brings the history and Underground Railroad activities in the little Black settlements out from the shadows of the more flamboyant, better-documented abolitionist havens nearby. The geographic and religious relationship between Brooklyn, Rocky Fork, and Alton positions the communities within an Underground Railroad zone. Rocky Fork’s strategic accessibility along waterways, its location among Quakers and sympathetic Whites, combined with oral narratives and the history of the radical AME Church sum up the factors indicating how the geography of resistance influenced Underground Railroad activity. The history of the enclave exposes the importance of family and friendships, institution building and self-reliance, landownership and economic stability among pre–Civil War African American communities. The caves and iron furnaces along Underground Railroad routes in Miller Grove or Poke Patch contribute to the list of Underground Railroad spaces chapter 9. destination freedom 157 distinguished in a geography of resistance approach to the landscape. As small rural Black communities such as Miller Grove, Lick Creek, and Poke Patch are mapped and a cartographic signature established, vital associations between the smaller Black settlements and the better-known White abolitionist centers sharpen into focus. Blacks exploited the landscape to stake a claim for freedom within the Underground Railroad movement even as one law after another attempted to thwart escapes. Moving through the land as a method of securing freedom typified the Underground Railroad movement from the beginnings of enslavement until after the end of the American Civil War. Escape and reliance on the land lingered to the last. The devotion to freedom found in the world’s maroon communities and its later versions in free Black settlements further extended to Black Canadian communities. Whether in maroon communities or within the Underground Railroad movement, freedom has been as much about place as it has been about liberty. The history of African Americans written in the land reveals the pragmatic uses of the terrain. The landscape evokes the memory of Black rural communities once dotting the countryside. Elements of the landscape provide a few more pieces of the puzzle that fill the gaps between the escapees’ flight from slavery and the reemergence of the successful few who made it out of the South. The silent moments between escape and freedom, the exposing days and the desolate nights between Underground Railroad stations surface as the most difficult to understand or document. Leaving southern plantations and slave states, escapees found aid where they could in kitchens and cabin quarters. During the period of the traditional Underground Railroad, individual escapes such as that of J. W. C. Pennington or Harriet Tubman were acts of single-minded personal liberation and courage. Yet, each relied on community support. As the slavery crisis deepened, the mechanisms of escape extended from lonely singular escapes to groups and families attempting to free themselves from bondage, and finally to armed conflict in the name of freedom. Through two wars with a third looming on the horizon, Blacks fought in the military, siding with whoever seemed more likely to grant the freedom and liberty the country espoused. The story shifts over time and geography from sheltered and sequestered rural spaces to bold public action, culminating in daring, dramatic rescues in major northern cities such as Boston, Syracuse, Detroit, Oberlin, Ohio, and Troy, New York. Within the urban landscape, the Underground Railroad history of a host of major U.S. cities is as much about the history of communities in action as it is about individuals.Across the country, cities, towns, counties, and regions maintained distinctive identities along the pathways to freedom. [3.145.23.123] Project MUSE...

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