A View from the Drinking Gourd

Abstract

By the time a student reaches middle or high school, they are usually beyond thinking that the Underground Railroad was really a train or a very long tunnel through which enslaved African Americans ran to freedom. In many cases, however, their first studies of the subject have left them with several other misconceptions, i.e., there was little or no slavery in the northern states; almost all white northerners were aboli tionists; and African Americans in slavery were passive receiv ers of the magnanimous gestures of white stationmasters and conductors, with the only exceptions being Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. In our travels as musicians/educators we generally encounter surprise among students and in some cases educators, as they learn of the multicultural, interfaith, multinational movement against slavery, of which the acts of courage among fugitives from slavery and workers of the Underground Railroad (both free and en slaved) were a part. Additionally, we find that the leadership of the free African American community in the Underground Railroad is only in recent years coming into greater general acknowledgment, as is the presence of racism and segregation in the free states and certain territories that became the new