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Onward to Canada, Onward to Freedom: The Complete Story of the Underground Railroad

Submitted by: Maureen Stevens

Date: August 1, 2012

Description:

This lesson will focus on the complete story of the Underground Railroad. The students will learn the reasons for the need of the slaves to escape not only the Southern states but eventually the Northern states and into Canada to reach freedom from the laws that bound them to slavery. The students will learn of the dangers of embarking on the Underground Railroad, the perils they faced on the way to Canada and then how the escaped slaves made a life for themselves in Canada. There are several components to the lesson. The students will be presented a lecture on the coming of the Civil War and the Underground Railroad. The students will then complete several web based activities as well as view a video clip. The students will work in groups to study documents and create a newspaper to aid in their study of the material. The students will complete a culminating activity by examining one particular escaped slave’s life into freedom in Canada. Grade level: 11

Subject: U.S. History

Duration: 1-2 class periods

Goal:

The goal of this lesson is to enable the students to see that the story of the Underground Railroad does not end at the border of the Canada. The impact of the settlements created by the escaped slaves in Canada had a huge impact on the US. The students will then see that Canada is important to understanding US History as a whole. Hopefully, students will then see that Canada is now and has always been important to the success of the U.S. Objectives: Students will: • identify reasons for the Underground Railroad; • recognize routes of the Underground Railroad; • explain need for escaped slaves to reach and settle in Canada; • describe impact of the settlements in Canada as part of US History. Standards: This lesson addresses South Carolina state social studies standards as follows: Standard USHC-3: The student will demonstrate an understanding of how regional and ideological differences led to the Civil War and an understanding of the impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on democracy in America. Enduring Understanding: Democracy is based on the balance between majority rule and the protection of minority rights. To understand the impact of conflicting interests on the rights of minority groups, the student will… USHC-3.1: Evaluate the relative importance of political events and issues that divided the nation and led to civil war, including the compromises reached to maintain the balance of free and slave states, the abolitionist movement, the Dred Scott case, conflicting views on states’ rights and federal authority, the emergence of the Republican Party, and the formation of the Confederate States of America. Background Information: Students should have prior knowledge of abolitionism (4-6.2) and events and issues that led to the Civil War including slavery in the territories, states’ rights, the election of Abraham Lincoln (4-6.3) and the nullification crisis compromises over westward expansion, the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott decision. (8-4.3) they should have evaluated the arguments of secessionists in South Carolina. (8-4.4)In United States Government students may evaluate significant documents in relation.

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Materials • Lecture Presentation (see notes on Page 4) and copies of resources available here (Pages 5-11) • Promethean or Smart Board for Webquest activities • Internet access to the following sites:

o http://www.blackhistorycanada.com/events.php?themeid=21&id=6 o http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/features/freedom/maps/index.html o http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/features/freedom/story.html?id=17502b67-cf40-4551-8912-

be61b23a99de o http://www.museevirtuel-virtualmuseum.ca/edu/ViewLoitCollection.do?method=preview&id=2999&lang=EN o http://www.museevirtuel-virtualmuseum.ca/edu/ViewLoitLo.do?method=preview&lang=EN&id=3128 o http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/multimedia/interactive/the-underground-railroad/?ar_a=1 o http://www.homeingloryland.com/timeline.html o http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/winter-2005/book-about-underground-railroad-bryan-walls-what-is-a-

griot/print/ • Paper and pencil Procedures: 1. Students will begin class with a bell ringer for their journals: Imagine what it would be like to try to escape slavery

using the Underground Railroad. What would the risks and dangers be? How would you react to these risks and dangers? Discuss the students’ responses.

2. Lecture on the Coming of the Civil War and the impact of the Fugitive Slave Law in creating the need for escaped slaves to now travel to Canada instead of just to the North. (See notes on pages 4-5.)

3. View video clip on the Underground Railroad at http://www.blackhistorycanada.com/events.php?themeid=21&id=6.

Discuss student reactions. 4. Distribute map to students and have them complete while using the interactive map at

http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/features/freedom/maps/index.html. Students will identify on their map the states of the North and the South. The students will identify escape routes of the Underground Railroad. The students will identify key settlements in Canada of escaped slaves. Although a map is provided on page 5, the online interactive map is much better and recommended.

5. Students who finish their maps early will begin to read the article “Tracks to Freedom: Promised land, second chance” (pages 6-8 or at http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/features/freedom/story.html?id=17502b67-cf40-4551-8912-be61b23a99de) Print this and other materials so that students can read at their desks in classrooms not equipped with technology. Once everyone has read the article and completed the maps, the teacher should ask for student reactions to what they have learned so far.

6. Students will collectively complete the Webquest as if they were slaves trying to escape at the website http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/multimedia/interactive/the-underground-railroad/?ar_a=1 .

7. Next, students will be broken into groups to examine documents that have been pre-printed for them at http://www.museevirtuel-virtualmuseum.ca/edu/ViewLoitCollection.do?method=preview&id=2999&lang=EN. Click on the side tab for Travellers or visit: http://www.museevirtuel-virtualmuseum.ca/edu/ViewLoitLo.do?method=preview&lang=EN&id=3128

8. Students will examine the above documents and, together in their group, create an article of their own explaining

the impact of their topic on the settlements in Canada. Each contribution will be collected and printed as a newspaper project that the entire class can also use to study for a test on the last day of the unit.

9. The culminating activity will be examination of escaped slave Thronton Blackburn’s history at:

http://www.homeingloryland.com/timeline.html. The students will be able to see the timeline of his escape and what happened once he arrived in Canada.

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10. If time permits, students will read the article “Up from Slavery” found at http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/winter-2005/book-about-underground-railroad-bryan-walls-what-is-a-griot/print/ (also available here on Pages 9-11 ) and write a fully-developed reaction paragraph.

Evaluation/Assessment: Student learning will be assessed during the whole class discussion and their effort based on personal participation. Students’ work will be evaluated via their journal completion, map completion, newspaper contribution, and on a unit test. Possible Extension/ Wrap-Up/ Additional Notes: If time permits, it would be wonderful for the students to explore how life would be for escaped slaves who remained in Canada after the Civil War as compared to those who returned the United States. This could be encouraged by a reading project for extra credit, for example. Also, it would be beneficial to continue to revisit the US-Canada relationship throughout the study of US history in any U.S. history course.

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Notes on the Coming of the Civil War Democracy expanded in the United States as new territories were claimed, settled and entered the union as full partners under the terms of the Northwest Ordinance (USHC 1.4). However, expansion also led to the greatest challenge to democracy and the Southern elite became increasingly determined to maintain slavery. As new western states applied for admission to the Union, sectionalism increased as the divisions between the interests of the regions became more and more evident. The struggle to maintain the balance of power between slave and free states in the federal government was rooted in the compromises made at the Constitutional Convention over representation in Congress – equal representation of the states in the Senate and representation proportional to population in the House. (USHC 1.4) Because of the growing population of the northern and western states through immigration and westward movement, the South was losing the ability to protect southern interests in the House of Representatives despite the advantage given to them by being able to count 3/5s of their slaves for the purposes of representation. (USHC 1.4) This led Southerners to fight to maintain an equal number of slave and free states so that they would have an equal numbers of votes in the Senate. Tensions between the regions over the expansion of slavery increased between 1820 and 1860 until compromise was impossible. In 1820, Northern opposition to the application of Missouri to enter the union as a slave state was overcome by a compromise that also admitted Maine as a free state and drew the line on the expansion of slavery in the territories at the 36̊ 30’. The annexation of Texas was delayed for almost a decade because of the divisiveness of admitting another large slave state. Northerners saw the Polk administration’s willingness to give up the 54̊ 40’ in Oregon, while at the same time provoking a war with Mexico over territories in the southwest as the influence of the slave power. During the Mexican War, Representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania proposed that the United States assert that any territories won from Mexico be “free soil”, not open to competition of slave labor with that of free white labor. This Wilmot Proviso passed the House but was stopped in the Senate, giving further evidence to southerners that they must maintain the balance of slave and free states in order to protect their ‘peculiar institution.’ The gold rush in 1849 sped the population of California and its application for statehood as a free state which would again upset the balance. The Compromise of 1850 was cobbled together and introduced the principle of popular sovereignty to decide the slave question. California was admitted as a free state, the slavery question in other areas taken in the Mexican cession was to be decided based on popular sovereignty, the sale of slaves was prohibited in Washington D.C., and a new fugitive slave law was to be enforced by the federal government. No one was happy with all parts of this compromise. Efforts by southerners to reclaim their fugitive slaves were countered by Northern states trying to circumvent the law and protect personal liberty. The compromise intensified the animosity between the sections. Although the abolitionist movement kept the issue of slavery at the forefront of national conversation, abolitionists did not significantly impact the actions of the national government. The distribution of Garrison’s The Liberator through the mails was banned in the South and shows the fear that abolitionist sentiment struck in that region. Abolitionists helped some slaves to escape to the North on the Underground Railroad. Key examples of fugitive slaves settling in Canada are as follows: • Josiah Henson settled in Dresden and is considered to be Harriet Beecher Stowe’s inspiration for her title

character in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He preached and trained many African-Canadians for farming jobs. His settlement became known as Dawn.

• A slave named John was freed by the death of his master and given his entire master’s possessions including his white wife. He and his wife faced many obstacles and saw life in Canada as the best option for them and the nine children.

• The Elgin Settlement, known also as Buxton, was created when Rev. William King inherited 15 slaves and moved them to Canada because he was opposed to slavery. He created a school and jobs for the escaped slaves.

However, the numbers of escaped slaves were relatively small, especially in the deep South because of distance to free land. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book Uncle Tom’s Cabin reached many northern readers and evoked popular sympathy for slaves and anger over the Fugitive Slave Laws. The abolitionist John Brown’s actions at Harpers’ Ferry struck fear in the hearts of slave owners and made them both determined to protect slavery and very fearful of the intentions of northerners. Brown was hailed as a martyr by vocal Northern abolitionists leading Southerners to believe the feeling was generalized in the North and thus further divided the North and the South. The actions of abolitionists were significant but it was the controversy over the spread of slavery to the territories that eventually contributed to secession, war, and ultimately, abolition. The Supreme Court ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional (despite the fact that the Kansas Nebraska Act had made the Missouri Compromise null) because slaves were property and the Constitution protected

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the right of slave owners to their property regardless of where they took their slaves. Therefore, Congress could make no law restricting the expansion of slavery. Although this ruling narrowly applied to the territories, it led Northerners to fear that the Supreme Court, dominated by southern Democrats, might rule state laws against slavery unconstitutional and so the democratic process of popular sovereignty would not be effective in restricting the spread of slavery. The Democratic Party split along sectional lines and the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln won the election of 1860 running on a platform of “free soil.” Lincoln’s election in 1860 led southern states to meet in convention and pass articles of secession stating that their rights as states were being violated by the federal government. The conflicting views of states’ rights and federal authority had been evolving in the United States since the ratification of the Constitution. To protect slavery, South Carolina secessionists led other southern states in seceding from the Union and forming the Confederate States of America.

Map

**Recommended: Interactive map at http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/features/freedom/maps/index.htm

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Article

Tracks to Freedom: Promised land, second chance

'Here they sought education, equality and land to call their own. Many struggled; others carved out lives that would have made their one-time owners envious.' By Chris Lackner The Ottawa Citizen - Saturday, August 26, 2006 http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/features/freedom/story.html?id=17502b67-cf40-4551-8912-be61b23a99de KINGSVILLE, Ontario - For Underground Railroad "passengers," Canadian soil marked the end of the line. But it often proved no paradise. Fugitive slaves fled hundreds of miles only to exchange one struggle for another. With freedom in their grasp, they faced an uphill battle to survive. From the deck of the Pelee Islander I watched the American shoreline become a speck on the horizon. I'd explored the Underground Railroad's history on foot across 375 miles of America. Now, I was officially homeward bound on a small passenger ferry from Sandusky, Ohio, to Kingsville, Ont. While many fugitives crossed Lake Erie to reach Canada, their water-bound journeys were very different than my own. I relaxed and soaked in the voyage -- from the soothing sunlight and moist lake breeze to the cotton-candy clouds. But most fugitives would have hidden below deck with the cargo to avoid being detected by unsympathetic eyes.

CREDIT: Dan Janisse, The Windsor Star

First Baptist Church was founded by a congregation of 11 fugitive slaves.

When I arrived in Canada, I knew I'd have a roof over my head and food on the table. In contrast, fugitive slaves typically arrived with nothing -- no money, no land and no allies. But they did have newfound freedom. Fugitive slave Josiah Henson was so emotional when he reached free soil that onlookers likely thought he was a madman. "My first impulse was to throw myself on the ground," Henson wrote of his 1830 arrival in Canada. Henson's gleeful shouts soon attracted a concerned spectator who asked the fugitive what was wrong. "I jumped up and told him I was free," Henson remembered. "'O,' (the man) said with a hearty laugh, 'Is that it? I never knew freedom make a man roll in the sand before.' " But Henson's celebrations were short-lived, for he understood the hardships ahead: "There was not much time to be lost, though, in frolic -- even at this extraordinary moment. I was a stranger, in a strange land, and had to look about me at once for refuge and resource."

While Canada became a fugitive slave haven, it can hardly claim moral superiority.

CREDIT: Dan Janisse, The Windsor Star

Keeping the Freedom Alive monument in Windsor.

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I've encountered many Canadians who believe slavery never existed here. But while the Canadian climate couldn't support a large-scale plantation economy, slaves were once common.

In 1793, Upper Canada passed legislation banning the import of new slaves, but pre-existing slaves weren't freed until 1833. By effectively ending slavery decades before the United States, Canada became a destination for fugitives.

As many as 40,000 fugitives and free blacks fled to Upper Canada in the decades before the American Civil War. They established black communities such as the Dawn Settlement near Dresden and the Elgin Settlement in Buxton.

Fugitives also settled in such cities as Windsor, Chatham, St. Catharines, Niagara Falls and Toronto.

Many returned to the United States after the Civil War, but roughly 20,000 American blacks stayed and helped build modern Canada; their descendants still call North Buxton, Chatham and Niagara Falls and other communities home.

But Canadians didn't welcome refugees with open arms. Many resented the exodus of American slaves.

Robert Nelson, a Virginian fugitive who settled in Colchester, Ont., recalled the racist attitudes he encountered in his new home in Benjamin Drew's A North-side View of Slavery.

"The prejudice is higher here in this place than in any part of Canada -- it arises from a wish to keep the colored people so that they can get their labor," he said of his new neighbours. "They say, too, that the colored people steal. It may be that a few are a little light-fingered ... and greatest mischief is, it scandalizes us. What two or three bad fellows do, prejudice lays to the whole of us."

While visiting Oberlin College in Ohio, I met Ed Vermus, a special-collections librarian interested in anti-slavery history. Mr. Vermus, a native of London, Ont., discussed the role the Underground Railroad played in shaping Canada's national myths.

"The Canadian national identity has, to some extent, been forged by its relationship with the United States. Historically it has been a place of refuge to people fleeing violence, oppression or political uncertainty in America."

Mr. Vermus said the pattern started with Loyalist Tory refugees from the American Revolution and continued with fugitive slaves.

"In the American psyche, people have made Canada out to be this land of Oz -- with less ethnic conflict, universal health care and politics without religion," Mr. Vermus said. "It's a reputation greater than what Canada can live up to. In some ways, it has contributed, undeservedly, to Canadians' own sense of superiority."

While fugitives faced prejudice in Canada, their arrival also didn't guarantee security. American slave-catchers still surfaced in some border communities.

That threat meant that Underground Railroad "stations" were still needed on Canadian soil. In Windsor, that role often fell to the Sandwich First Baptist Church. The church was built in 1851 by a congregation founded by 11 runaway slaves.

Evidence of the Underground can still be found in the church. Underneath the red carpet that covers the front of the church, a secret trapdoor leads to the basement.

Fugitives allegedly used the hidden passage to quickly disappear below.

According to legend, a secret tunnel also once connected the bank of the Detroit River -- roughly two miles away -- to the basement.

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"On a Sunday, the preacher kept a lookout at the door," Rev. Colin Smith, the modern-day leader of the congregation, said when I visited him in May. "If they saw someone coming -- a white person, or a stranger -- they would give a signal to the preacher and he would break out in a particular song. The song would be a signal for slaves to hide."

Rev. Smith said many Canadians are ill-informed about their own history.

"Many people, both then and now, only think of Canada as a haven for runaway slaves, but they also met with extreme prejudice here."

As the Pelee Islander approached Ontario's rocky shoreline, my own arrival in Canada was at hand.

The Kingsville port proved to be nothing more than two concrete piers dotted by a handful of rumpled fishermen. Practical. Sturdy. No flags. It lacked even the faintest attempt at glamour.

After spending 80 days in America, where bravado and patriotism are practically a religion, the harbour seemed stereotypically Canadian.

But these shores once offered fugitives a second chance. Here they sought education, equality and land to call their own. Many struggled; others carved out lives that would have made their one-time owners envious.

"I have travelled in all the principal places in Canada West and, generally speaking, the coloured people are doing well," recalled Benjamin Miller, a fugitive from Missouri who settled in London, Ont. "We that begin here illiterate men have to go against wind and tide. We have a learned, enterprising people to contend with; we have a colder climate than we're used to ... (and) we have our own ignorance and poverty to contend with. It takes a smart man to do all that, but many do it."

For students to think about:

1) What were the obstacles faced by the fugitive slaves who arrived in Canada?

2) It is said that Canada has historically been a refuge to people fleeing violence, oppression, or political uncertainty in America. What does this statement mean?

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Article

“Up from Slavery”

Posted By Stacey Gibson, Managing Editor of University of Toronto Magazine December 14, 2004 @ 10:34 pm In Feature, Winter 2005 | http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/winter-2005/book-about-underground-railroad-bryan-walls-what-is-a-griot/print/ Bryan Walls has been operating the John Freeman Walls historic site and Underground Railroad Museum in Puce, Ontario, since 1985

In African culture, the storyteller – the keeper of oral history – holds the title of griot. A prestigious position, the griot acts as a guardian of family memory, ensuring the lives of ancestors aren’t reduced only to marked graves, single epitaphs.

And when Bryan Walls – author of The Road That Led to Somewhere, an account of his great-great-grandparents’ escape from slavery – was growing up in the 1950s, the family griot was Aunt Stella Butler. At gatherings at her home in Puce, Ont., a small town outside of Windsor, Aunt Stella would set the

table with fried chicken, sweet potato pie and peach cobbler. Sometimes she and her visitors would play the tiny wooden piano, soulful voices singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and other spirituals from days past. And she would share the stories of her ancestors, whose journeys began on the continent of Africa, wound through the plantations of North Carolina and continued to the rural lands of Canada.

She would tell Bryan how his great-great-great-grandparents, Hannabal and Jubil, were forced from their homeland of Africa and sold as slaves to a tobacco plantation owner in North Carolina. And how Hannabal escaped from the plantation in his later years, running from bounty hunters and “negro dogs” – bloodhounds trained from birth to track the scent of fugitive slaves – until he died of a heart attack in his pursuit of freedom.

She also told him stories of his great-great-grandfather, John Walls, who was born a slave on the same plantation in 1813. But, remarkable for the time, John formed a deep friendship with the slaveowner’s son, Daniel. When Daniel became fatally ill in his thirties, it was John he turned to, asking him to care for his white wife, Jane, and their four children. He also declared John a free man.

Months later, John and Jane fell in love and decided they would travel to a free state and marry. But the journey would be a seditious undertaking: in North Carolina, not only were interracial relationships illegal, but they were sure to unleash a maelstrom of fury from the community. The couple, along with the children, fled the plantation at night and headed toward Canada.

Slave owners quickly put a bounty on John’s head. The group travelled at night, veiled by the forests of North Carolina, Kentucky and Indiana. They also travelled incognito: at times, Jane pretended that John was her slave, rather than her companion. In one case she tied him to a wagon wheel and whipped him to satisfy Kentuckian slave patrollers’ curiosity.

The fugitives were sheltered and fed along the way by white and black volunteers on the Underground Railroad. In Indiana, a white Quaker abolitionist married the couple in a quiet outdoor ceremony known as “jumping the broom.” They crossed the Detroit River on an abolitionist-run boat, finally finding safety in Puce in 1846.

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Over his lifetime, John accrued 200 acres of land, much of which remained in his family’s hands for generations. The couple also had six children of their own. And – never forgetting their own complicated journey – their home became a refuge for other emancipated slaves, a final terminal on the Underground Railroad.

In recounting these stories, Aunt Stella also passed down the words that John told his own children: “You are a black, be proud and strong. Remember, you are a slave’s descendant, just as good as anyone.” “The story, for its time, was stranger than fiction,” says Bryan Walls, who graduated with a doctor of dental surgery degree from the University of Toronto in 1973. “But through genealogical research, I’ve been able to underscore that it’s not only true, but it’s unquestionably true.”

For more than 25 years, Walls, 58, has been preserving his family’s history in various forms: in 1980, he published The Road That Led to Somewhere, an account of Jane and John Walls’ journey through the Underground Railroad. He recently finished writing a libretto based on his book, which is set to be produced on Broadway in 2006. And he has been operating the John Freeman Walls Historic Site and Underground Railroad Museum in Puce since 1985. Intertwining the story of the Walls family with the larger history of North American slavery, the site relates the struggles of the estimated 40,000 African-Americans who followed the path to freedom in Canada.

The clandestine network known as the Underground Railroad was run by abolitionists who helped fugitives escape to the northern United States and Canada. Existing from the early 1800s to the end of the Civil War in 1865, it operated on railroad terminology: conductors were black and white abolitionists who helped usher passengers to stations (safehouses, usually 25 to 30 kilometres apart, which provided shelter and sometimes food) until they reached their final terminal of freedom. Fugitives moved most often at night, usually by foot, and always under the threat of punishment or death from slave patrollers eager for a $10 reward. Navigational tools were few: the North Star – the Underground Railroad’s most powerful metaphor for freedom – proved a steadfast guide. Moss, which often grows on the north side of trees, also served as a compass. Survival lay in one’s ability to remain invisible, to rely on instinct and to tap into the arcane network of supporters. “Riding this train broke the laws of the land, but the laws of God are higher than man’s,” wrote one balladeer.

In the ninth grade, his family moved to the city of Windsor, where Walls attended the all-white Catholic Assumption high school, which he describes as “a real culture shock.” But he excelled, playing football and becoming class president in his senior year. In Grade 10, his dentist noticed the teen’s interest in his profession and invited him to a banquet featuring the dean of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Dentistry. “I said, That’s what I want to be, I want to be a dentist.” He never veered from his declaration. In 1969, he graduated with a bachelor of science degree from the University of Windsor, and subsequently earned a doctor of dental surgery degree from U of T. At the age of 27, he opened his own dentistry practice in Windsor.

It was three years after Walls opened his dental office that the history of his ancestors took hold of him. It was the fall of 1976, and he had cast a new set of dentures for a cousin, who had shown up at the appointment with tears running down his face. “Aunt Stella is selling the family property,” he said.

Thinking her family would not want to keep the acreage, Aunt Stella, then 92, had given power of attorney to her lawyer, who sold the land for $35,000. The thought of losing his great-great-grandfather’s homestead was unbearable to Walls. He negotiated with the lawyer and the new owners, and eventually reclaimed the land for $40,000. “They [the new owners] didn’t realize the significance it had to our family. It represented freedom. And our ancestors’ burial ground was here …” He stops. “We couldn’t get to a point where we had to ask permission to come back and visit the graves.”

On a warm November evening, the first night of his ownership, an elated Walls took his two young sons out to sleep in the log cabin. Around 2 a.m., he was startled awake. “I thought I heard something at the door, and I checked to see if anyone was there.” No one was, but he was left with a current of strange emotions running through him, and the feeling that something – possibly the spirits of his ancestors – had been present.

The next morning, full of exuberance, he ran through the property and along the site’s creek. He knew that he wanted to write a book based on his ancestors’ history – that it was “part of my destiny, and God’s purpose for my life.” “They weren’t really famous figures of that period of history, not like Harriet Tubman or Harriet Beecher Stowe or Frederick Douglass, but they were like many, many thousands who felt that freedom was important, that making the best of their talents was important.”

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That same day, he began collecting from Aunt Stella the details of his great-great-grandparents’ journey. Over the next four years, he wrote the manuscript for The Road That Led to Somewhere. “It all stemmed from these strong emotions that come – people can call it inspiration – when you’re given a thought you can’t get rid of, and it just keeps churning inside of you.” “That,” he says, “became the starting point of my writing journey.”

At the same time, Walls, along with his family, decided to develop the property into the John Freeman Walls Historical Site. He calls it “a family labour of love.” Over a series of years, his father, brother and uncles constructed almost every building on the site. They stripped the modern siding off the log cabin, and restored it to its original 19th-century state. They laid a foundation and erected a new roof on a large log cabin donated by the Ministry of Natural Resources. The cabin now serves as home to an international gospel concert every August. Walls’ daughter Brittany, an aspiring singer, has opened every concert since the age of three, delivering poignant renditions of “O Canada.”

The men also crafted the furnishings for the buildings. During a trip to Memphis in 1985, Walls and his uncles stopped at the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The motel – now a civil-rights museum – was at that time in a state of disrepair. They asked permission to take a small number of bricks from the building.

On their return to Puce, Walls and his uncles fashioned the bricks into an elegant four-foot-high cross. It hangs between the chapel’s two tiny windows, surrounded by rays of sunlight.

In 1991, Walls was involved in a car accident that left him with fractured vertebrae, and a legacy of chronic pain. Shortly after the collision, he began to lose dexterity in his hands. Walls began dropping his dental instruments, and realized he could hurt his patients. Six months later, his doctor ordered him to stop working. Many nights he sleeps sitting up. Some nights he sleeps for two hours; others, not at all. “You learn to live with the pain,” he says. “I do it through my faith by saying, Lord, command me to do the impossible, to overcome it.”

Somehow, through his ordeal, he has continued to impart his message of racial equality. He has earned both an Order of Canada and Order of Ontario for his promotion of black history, and lectures frequently to Toronto police officers on the need for racial harmony. He has released educational material and a CD, which are distributed largely to new police recruits and schools, promoting his Mutual Respect Campaign of racial tolerance.

Two years ago, Walls began working on a form of storytelling befitting a present-day griot: a libretto. Each morning, he would lift a tiny table into the family cemetery, and – the tools of a dentist now replaced with the instruments of a writer – carefully shape the story. He originally sat by the gravestones of John and Jane Walls, but eventually, he says, the sound of their spirits became too loud and intrusive. So he moved his table near the area of those he had known firsthand: his father and Uncle Earl. In the comfort and safety of their spirits, he wrote for as long as there was light. He often continued to write in the silence of night in his own home, after his family was safely in bed, but preferred to be near his ancestors’ quiet wisdom.

Near the end of each tour of the historical site, Bryan Walls points out a world map on a wall of the museum. Every time a visitor comes from a new region, a family member pushes a pin into the location. The colourful pinheads form a pointillist picture: step close, and primary colours of red, blue and yellow dart into Australia, Japan, the Caribbean, the United States, Canada. Step away, and the pins merge into a luminous mosaic of countries whose residents have come to hear stories from a modern-day griot who talks about peace, harmony and racial equality. “We have so much to be thankful for as descendants of fugitive slaves; we know they laid a foundation that we could build on, and that’s what progress is all about. It is not just an African-American story. It is a story of liberation,” says Walls. “It’s a history that belongs to all of us.”

For Students to think about: 1) What challenges were faced by John Walls and his new wife Jane? 2) What exactly is the Underground Railroad? 3) Why did the current Mr. Walls and his family want to create this historic site?