Wednesday, May 17, 2000
Students' Web site has local stories of courage
By Anna Guido
Enquirer Contributor
Tennelle Woods, Jennifer Riddle and Fletcher Beaman helped create a site devoted to the Underground Railroad.
(Craig Ruttle photo)
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An alliance of students from an inner-city school and a private school has produced a richly researched Web site for the study of the Underground Railroad. Edwin J. Rigaud of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center hopes to duplicate that effort nationwide.
“This project demonstrates the effectiveness of the Underground Railroad as a model of cooperation for today and for the future,” said Mr. Rigaud, the museum's president and chief executive officer.
“Helping to recreate a part of history has taught me the importance of history and how it ties into people's lives,” said Dominica Patton, a senior at Hughes Center.
Dominic D'Alonzo, a sophomore at Summit Country Day, said he thought he was well informed, but he learned a lot along the way.
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THE WEB SITE
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Address: www.criticalfusion.org.
What it is: An educational Web site created by students in remembrance of those who “valued Liberty above Servitude.”
Features: Sections on Arts; Economics; Families; Literature; Mapping the Way; Praise & Politics; Society; Spoken Expressions and Written Expressions. The title page features Charles T. Webster's famous painting, The Underground Railroad,which depicts escaping slaves arriving in Cincinnati at the home of Levi Coffin.
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The students' research is published at www.criticalfusion.org.
Their goal was to gain a unique perspective on slavery.
“When you hear about the Underground Railroad, you hear about the south and you hear about the north, but you don't hear about Cincinnati being a major stop,” said Hughes student Jennifer Riddle.
The Underground Railroad was a series of safe houses used by escaping slaves traveling north on their way to freedom.
“From Northside to College Hill — that whole area was full of stops of people who were willing to help out,” Miss Riddle said. “I look up Colerain Avenue and think: Slaves passed through
here trying to reach freedom. Without having researched this site, I wouldn't have known that at all.”
Hughes Center began building the Web site last year. Summit Country Day, a Catholic independent school in Hyde Park, joined the project this year.
Cincinnati Bell donated $5,000. The project includes the Freedom Center, Miami University in Oxford and the Urban League of Greater Cincinnati.
The Freedom Center wants to replicate the initiative nationally.
“We're looking at about 60 freedom stations around the country where people can come together and work on projects like this, focusing on the Underground Railroad history in their own region,” said Ernest Britton, associate director of communications for the Freedom Center.
“This educational partnership is the only project in the nation using high school students from an inner city school and a private school, assisted by faculty from a university, a social service agency, a distributive museum, and a corporation,” said project coordinator Dennis Walsh of Miami.
The students studied some of the many stories of freedom and courage in Cincinnati's involvement with the Underground Railroad movement. They researched two area families who were instrumental in the Underground Railroad — the Margaret Garner family of African-American descent, and the Harriet Beecher Stowe family of white descent.
Margaret Garner is the runaway Boone County slave memorialized in Toni Morrison's Pulitzer prize-winning novel, Beloved. Her trial for running away from her master took place in Cincinnati at the height of the Underground Railroad movement.
“Studying stories like Margaret's in a multicultural atmosphere allows students to consider slavery, the Underground Railroad and the real people of history in a new light,” Mr. Britton said.
Anne Stern, a project coordinator and director of development for Summit Country Day, said everyone involved in the project had something valuable to contribute.
“One of the powerful tools of educational alliances is that everyone brings something to the table,” she said.
Ms. Stern said it's also been exciting to see the traditional role of the classroom reconfigured as students and adults learned side by side.
Hughes Center teacher Mark Brackman said one thing he's noticed since heading up the project at the Cincinnati magnet school is that race was not an issue with students.
“The black and white issue is no issue,” he said.
One of his students, Ms. Patton, believes the same holds true for many of the people involved in the Underground Railroad.
“I've learned that it wasn't just African-Americans and Caucasians fighting for a race issue — it was basically a freedom issue,” Miss Patton said. “They were fighting for the right to be free.”
There were other benefits, she said.
“I've also learned how to communicate with others, how to research and find information, how to condense information and how to work in a college environment,” Miss Patton said.
Mr. D'Alonzo researched the Garner case for the project, learning how Margaret Garner killed her baby rather than have the baby grow up in slavery.
“I came into the project knowing about this, but it was still shocking to read more about it.”
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