Challenging the conventional wisdom that history is all in the past, Spencer Crew '71 outlined the debated history of the Underground Railroad, the myth surrounding it and the necessity of understanding its enduring relevance Tuesday night.
Crew's speech, this year's George Morgan lecture, was titled "The Struggle Against Slavery: The Story of the Underground Railroad" and was the latest installment in the lecture series sponsored by the Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice.
The Wayland Collegium cosponsored the event, which brought Crew to campus from the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, where he is the executive director and CEO. On Monday, Crew led a discussion after the screening of the PBS documentary, "Unchained Memories," an event also supported by the committee.
Characterizing the Underground Railroad as a "successful interracial movement" that should serve as an inspiration to those who are not free today, Crew told The Herald on Tuesday that most contemporary issues spring out of history.
"The question is, are (historical injustices) really in the past?" Crew said. "The legacy of race continues to plague us."
During his lecture, he focused on the sometimes-uncertain history of the Underground Railroad and its legacy, rather than overtly discussing their implications. He characterized the United States as entangled in slavery well before the Civil War, pointing out that the country produced seven-eighths of the world's cotton and that the White House was occupied by someone sympathetic to slavery for 50 out of the 72 years between the Washington and Lincoln presidencies.
"Slavery was probably the most dominant economic and political force of that century," Crew said. "We were the OPEC of cotton in the 19th century."
After covering the historical background, Crew spent most of his lecture talking about the most valiant and often most overlooked participants in the Underground Railroad - the slaves themselves. Historically, Crew said slaves "were seen as a sidebar," but he said they took proactive roles and faced simultaneously losing and gaining the most from their choice to pursue freedom.
"For each person, you were going against the laws of the land, you were going against the majority of the population," Crew said.
He presented several stories - some that were passed down orally, others that were later documented - of courageous slaves who escaped enslavement through the Underground Railroad's network. Henry Box Brown, a slave from Virginia, mailed himself in a box with the help of abolitionists and arrived in Philadelphia as a free man. The fabled Aunt Betsy hid her family under piles of vegetables to be delivered from Kentucky to the free Ohio and then set them loose after crossing the Ohio River. In all of Crew's stories, the slaves reached freedom through the complicated and often unorganized network of people that composed the Underground Railroad.
Crew also highlighted the importance of free black communities in the North that protected escaped slaves, citing Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Cincinnati as the hubs of these communities. Crew said he hoped that the "cooperation, bravery and courage" of the participants in the Underground Railroad would serve as an example of how individuals can make a difference. This sentiment is echoed in the mission of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, which opened its doors in August 2004.
Appointed in 2003 by President Ruth Simmons, the committee is sponsoring a series of events surrounding the questions of slavery, reparations and the University's past and future involvement in both, particularly regarding the University's ties to the slave trade.
"The objective was not only to examine the institution's history but also to try to enrich a conversation that too often unfolds in a point-counterpoint kind of way. Americans don't know how to talk about race and slavery," said James Campbell, associate professor of history and chair of the committee.
Events sponsored by the committee will continue through next fall, when Campbell said the committee hopes to figure out what it is "supposed to think, conclude and do." The committee will submit a report to the Brown community by the spring of 2006.
