Underground Railroad Exhibit: Teacher Resources - Lesson Plan Two

Welcome to Next Stop Freedom! An exhibit on the story of the Underground Railroad.

Canadian Teachers Guide

Lesson Plan Two: Deborah Brown - Free at Last, Free at Last!

This narrative is a shortened version of the script for the Underground Railroad: Next Stop Freedom exhibit currently located at the ROM. The manner of speaking is based on the actual dialect of former slaves as recorded by historical researchers in the 1930s.

DEBORAH BROWN NARRATIVE

Now you listen to me. My name is Deborah Brown and I'm going to tell you about the thousands of fugitive slaves who fled to Canada on the Underground Railroad.

The first thing you got to know, I was born a slave, owned by a man down in Maryland in the States. He owned me, my husband Perry Brown, and a lot of other coloured folk. He own us like he own his horses and his barns. We couldn't go no where without his say so and he used to beat us if we didn't work as hard as he like.

But coloured folks wasn't always slaves. We all come down from coloured families that were stole out of Africa and brought right here over the ocean and sold like we were horses or oxen. The old people say they was even slaves in Canada away back before my time.

Now we was all the time thinking about Canada on account of when Miss Cooley was sold to Americans and dragged to the States, kickin' and screamin'. That made the British Governor in Upper Canada so mad. They has slaves in Canada, but that man, John Graves Simcoe, he wanted to abolish slavery.

We run away when we heard the master say he be selling my husband Perry away from me to some other master. So we took our passage for Canada on the Underground Railroad. We stole away in the "dark of the moon". We didn't take nothing, just a hatchet and some bread in a sack. We walked till I was about give out. We laid by til starlight. We knew the North Star, how it would lead us out of slave country. All the time I was thinking about my daughter Sarah, left behind.

Now you got to understand that the Underground Railroad wasn't no real railroad with iron tracks and such. It was just folk, coloured folk and white folk and Indian folk helping runaway slaves find the way to get clear of the slave states and safe into the free states up north.

They was conductors to help folks move up the line going North. The stations they called them, was mostly houses or barns where it was safe to lay low for a night or two, get warm and get fed, before moving on again. The conductors never said they was helping runaway slaves. They said they was moving freight or wood, or books with black leather covers. They was secret words and songs and all such to throw off the slave catchers.

Quakers and free coloured folks and all such hide us and feed us going north till we got to Detroit. But I didn't feel safe even in a free state. Perry said not to worry. We wouldn't stop til we was in Canada where coloured people were free everywhere on account of a law made by them British in 1834 that say all they slaves will be free now.

An Indian man took us across the river to Sandwich and we out of the States forever. For a long time gone, coloured folks be coming to Canada where couldn't nobody buy or sell them. The folks say that coloured people settled in Canada as far west as British Columbia and as far east as Nova Scotia. They was living at Buxton and Chatham and Dawn Settlement in Ontario. And they was nice. Good farm land and new churches and schools all put up by coloured people themselves.

Harriet Tubman, what brought over 300 slaves to freedom herself, lived close by in St. Catharines. We call her the Moses of out people cause she brought so many out of bondage.

It was against the law of Canada to carry off a runaway slave, but slave catchers was going about catching hold of runaway slaves and running them south. Perry keep us on the long road to Toronto, on account of it being far from the border and slave catchers. We come all the way to York Township West, close to where Bathurst Street crossed over Bloor Street.

We didn't like to live in Toronto. Markham Street, that's what it called now, suited us just fine being out in the country away from the city.

They be coloured people living there for years and years. Some come free, some come slave. Most don't bring nothing with them but whatever trade they had when still a slave. Coloured folk work at all kinds of jobs, law, medicine, blacksmithing, bricklaying, farming, shoemaking, building. Many have some big properties.

Perry he worked at whatever he could catch with the coloured men that owned their own businesses. Hauling hay for Mr. Minks's livery stable, working for the master builder Mr.Tinsley's, or chopping wood for the Hubbard's bakery.

I didn't have no trade except washing and ironing so that's what I done. We attended the Wesleyan Methodist Church, but sometimes I went to the British Methodist Episcopal Church to hear Rev. Mitchell or Rev. Ball sermonize. They was fiery preachers for sure. After they sometimes have a body read out the papers to us and we listen. Mr. Henry Bibb and Mrs. Mary Bibb printed the "Voice of the Fugitive", and the "Provincial Freemen" was put out by Mary Ann Shadd. They had all kinds of stories like farming, abolition and where coloured children could go to school and where they could be kept out. You should know that coloured people was free enough in Canada, but they was some low class people here who still treated coloured people bad.

Sometimes walking home from washing, so tired, I see Mr. Thorton Blackburn's big yellow cab rolling by - they be one coloured man who surely never walked. His wife Lucy helped me get washing from white folk cause she used to be a washerwoman herself before she got rich. Everybody know the Blackburn's. They escaped from Detroit during a riot and the government refused to send them back to the States for escaping from slavery.

Now about the time we came to Canada, in the States they make a new law for catching runaway slaves. They call it the Fugitive Slave Act. Now it wasn't safe for no escaped or free-coloured folks nowhere in that whole United States. Even the freeborn coloured folks in the north was catched and made slaves who had never been slaves before. And then didn't folks just run for Canada with the devil at they heels. The Underground Railroad never had so many passengers.

They was troubled times. There was lots of runaway slaves here now. Mostly young men cause it was hard for old people, women and children to run away. It was hard when they first come. Walking through St. John's ward between Osgoode Hall and Mr. Eaton's store where it was mostly coloured people living I see little shacks and such in the back yards where people just come were living because they can't find they own place just yet. We was helping with food and clothes and such and those runaways happy.

A lot of people were angry, coloured and white, about the slave law. They were called "abolitionists" on account of they wanted to abolish slavery everywhere in the States. Now all over Toronto in the churches and halls they were meetings by the anti-Slavers. The preachers preached, and the great men rolled out their speeches. Men like George Brown and his newspaper, "The Globe" was all on fire to abolish slavery.

They had a big convention here in Toronto. Coloured men came from the States and Canada to talk about how to abolish slavery and how to settle fugitive slaves. They met down at St. Lawrence Hall. Mr. Henry Bibb, he that was once a runaway slave his self, gave a powerful oration.

Now we thought we was safe in Canada until Mr. Anderson got arrested. Mr. Anderson, years ago he killed a slave catcher what had come for him, and then he escaped to Canada. The States say he broke the law and they want him back. Most coloured men in the city went down to courthouse in Osgoode Hall. If he could be sent back, there wasn't a coloured person safe in Canada cause we all broke they laws even by just running away.

Perry say they all went quiet when the judge said to send John Anderson back to the States. Now Canada wasn't safe no more.

Well the abolitionist people made such a fuss they heard it all the way to London, England. That British government said them judges was wrong. They said he was fighting for his freedom and that was no crime. John Anderson could stay in Canada.

The slave states went to war with the free states and they called it the American Civil War. A lot of young coloured men in Canada wanted to go back and join the Union Army. Perry, the old fool, thought he go. I told him I'd give him a fight if he did any such foolishness. The two sides fight and kill something terrible. Then the most blessed thing happened. On September 22, 1862 President Lincoln of the United States said that all persons held as slaves were free. Free at last.

Now my daughter Sarah was free and she came join us. She didn't have to come on the Underground Railroad. She came as a free woman sitting right up on a proper steam train. And all that so many years ago now. We proud to buy our house on Markham Street, me and Sarah and my own granddaughter, Amelia.

My Perry he dead now, bless him. But all around me I see coloured folk and I know we gonna be here for a long time coming. That's the truth. And I know, cause I seen it all.