Publication: University of Maryland
Author: Cheryl Janifer LaRoche
Date of Publication: 2004
PDF File: LaRoche-2004-ON-THE-EDGE-OF-FREEDOM-FREE-BLACK-COMMUNITIES-AR.pdf
Description
At best, informal interviews reveal the Underground Railroad as poorly understood beyond the network of scholars, African-American studies students, and experts working in the field. Harvard graduates appear no more knowledgeable than high school students, blacks no more than whites. For more than a century and a half, a mythic story of kindly Quaker Friends helping brave, yet frightened fugitive slaves dominated America’s retelling of this historic episode. Harriet Tubman, perhaps the country’s best known and least understood historic figure, is most closely and consistently identified with the movement.
On the Edge of Freedom reinterprets romanticized representations of the Underground Railroad. The image of the solitary man, escaping slavery on foot, aided by white abolitionists working within a loosely organized network, gives way to nuanced understandings of the elastic, reticulated network of routes, and methods of subterfuge employed by African Americans and their accomplices required to sustain the Underground Railroad movement.