Wide chasms of disagreement still divide Cincinnati police and the U.S. Justice Department in their quest for compromise.

        The parties and mediators of a settlement of the city's racial profiling lawsuit still tiptoe around land mines in their final talks.

        The boycott still beats, and the clock ticks toward April, the one-year anniversary of the riots.

        It's a tense time for Cincinnati and its leaders. A time when flexibility has been stretched, when frustrations threaten to crack the calm like a thin crust on a volcano.

        The temptation to walk away from the bargaining table is almost palpable. Prayer warriors, on silent vigil outside government offices, represent untold others praying for an end, a resolution.

        Don't give up, they say. You decide Cincinnati's future.
       

History's lesson

        Add Spencer Crew's voice to that mantra. As executive director of Cincinnati's National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, he speaks the language of history.

        He says negotiators shouldn't forget the lessons of courage and cooperation that our ancestors taught. Cincinnati has struggled with mightier demons than police-community problems and economic-equality struggles.

        Cincinnati-area leaders and residents battled slavery and won. That's the message behind the Freedom Center's ads running in this newspaper and other media: “Freedom Takes Cooperation.”

        “There's something much larger than us as individuals at stake,” Mr. Crew says.

        In the 1850s and on, whites and blacks joined together to steal freedom for a few. The Fugitive Slave Act had just made freedom a longer reach for thousands of slaves flowing through Cincinnati on the Underground Railroad, the informal network of homes, cellars, trails and other routes that led north to Canada.

        The act maintained that slaves were still their masters' property even in free states, and it gave slave hunters special rights to pursue that property anywhere.

        Although in a free state, Cincinnati was a treacherous place for fugitive slaves. Most white Ohioans feared the fugitives might stay and provide cheap labor. Some whites turned in their neighbors, who faced financial ruin and prison if caught with even one escaped slave. Black emancipators faced imprisonment, enslavement and even death.

        Cooperation and courage kept the secret rails running. Mr. Crew says “conductors” had to battle their own fears and block out the objections of their families and society to keep working in stealth.
       

Conductors' goal

        John P. Parker, a former slave turned entrepreneur, stole across the Ohio River and helped slaves seeking freedom. He hid in coffins and once dove off a steamboat to elude bounty hunters. He housed slaves in his riverfront home. And he is credited with saving several hundred.

        The Rev. John Rankin; his wife, Jean; and their neighbors worked with Mr. Parker. The 100 steps into the hill below the Rankin house in Ripley was a path away from bounty hunters' eyes. The Rev. Mr. Rankin, who had a $2,500 bounty on his head, saved thousands from slavery.

        The Rev. Mr. Rankin and Mr. Parker and at least 64 other area “conductors” kept the goal in mind. “Sometimes the larger accomplishments are worth the disagreements that result from the choices you make,” Mr. Crew says.

        Today's leaders should muster just some of that cooperation, courage and resolve. Maybe then, today's mountains won't seem too high to climb.

       Denise Smith Amos can be reached at 768-8395, or e-mail damos@enquirer.com

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