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Activities Biographies Key Titles Links Literature Quiz Timeline

Experiencing the Underground Railroad

Age/Grade Level or Audience

Middle school, high school, and college language and drama classes; religious schools.

Description

Present a pantomime of slaves escaping to the North.

Procedure

Explain to the group that a network of 3,200 people formed the Underground Railroad, which, from 1830 to 1860, led 2,500 slaves per year toward safety. Many died along the way from hunger, cold, wounds, falls, or drowning; some were recaptured and returned to slavery. Many more built new lives for themselves in free states or Canada. For the pantomine, let students select a role to dramatize, for example, bystander, farmer, doctor, minister, leader, parent, aged slave, child, patroller, slave catcher, sheriff, Quaker or Mennonite abolitionist, station master, conductor, or plantation owner. Enact the following scenes:

intolerable slave conditions, such as the separation of families, hard labor, dangerous jobs, disease, and inadequate clothing, food, and shelter planning an escape gathering information from knowledgeable and trustworthy sources storing food and supplies for the journey making a getaway moving through forests and swamps or over rivers hopping trains or wagons locating roots, nuts, berries, grain, fruit, and mushrooms for food quietly snaring animals and birds

staying warm, dry, and well treating wounds, illness, or crying infants hiding while sleeping getting directions and following the North Star avoiding patrollers, dogs, and slave catchers wearing a disguise locating a conductor and station house acquiring a fake pass or papers of manumission establishing a new home learning to read finding work reuniting with lost relatives and friends

Sources

Cheek, William F., Black Resistance before the Civil War, Glencoe Press, 1970.
Evitts, William J., Captive Bodies, Free Spirits: The Story of Southern Slavery, Messner, 1985.
Himes, Chester, The Third Generation, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1989.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852, reprinted, Norton, 1993.

Alternative Applications

Have students compose dialogue to accompany emotional moments such as these:

• parting from old friends and family
• trusting an agent of the Underground Railroad
• risking whippings and brandings for trying to escape
• reaching a safe house
• hearing dogs approach
• fighting off snakes, insects, alligators, and other animals
• getting lost
• reaching a free state
• searching for missing family members