[BLANK_AUDIO]
[MUSIC]
It's a story that can't be forgotten.
Because there's so much injustice,
there's so much hatred and it's
something that we can't ever allow to happen again in our country
in a greater sense the whole world.
The best way that we can fight ignorance is to educate.
And so kids need to know this story about human injustice, about
doing what is right,
about going and believing in something to
the point where you take action on it.
[MUSIC]
>> Everyday
across the United States school children recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
The last sentence states,
with liberty and justice for all.
That liberty and justice came at a price. In America between 1607
and 1865, African Americans didn't have their freedom.
This time period they fought to be free.
However their story has often been excluded from the American experience.
Why?
Because most of their stories come from their oral tradition and
until the Civil Rights era their story wasn't considered important.
African Americans, Native Americans and Euro Americans worked together
here in Kansas, between 1854 and 1861
to make Kansas a free state,
to establish a Western edge of the underground railroad in this
country.
We started the long journey
to liberty and justice for all.
[MUSIC]
 
 
Just north
of the town of Wabaunsee,
stands a marker, in honor of the diverse,
brave men and women who traveled to that area.
The sign
reads,
Ad Astra Per Aspera
which means a rough road leads to the stars.
That monument has more meaning than most people know.
[MUSIC]
>> The journey to freedom was unlike the highway tolls that
you and I pay today.
Braving the underground railroad guaranteed exhaustion,
mental,
physical, and psychological. Thousands tried to pay the toll for
freedom.
[MUSIC]
Only a few made it.
And the ones that didn't were sent back to the farms they tried
to escape from.
[MUSIC]
 
>> It is estimated that between 20,000
and 30,000 slaves were
held along the western border of Missouri.
But over 115,000 statewide.
Although most slave holders have fewer than 10 slaves,
the work
that was required of them was every bit as grueling as those
on larger plantations in the south.
Still due to their smaller size it gave opportunity for slaves to
look beyond their masters' farms and to establish connections on
other farms that will enable some of them to escape.
[MUSIC]
>> A research in the history of the underground railroad throughout
the United States.
Many are the stories we hear about described individuals and families
leading small parties of slaves from one way station to the next,
acting as conductors, and as individual station masters,
those that provided safe-houses where slaves could stay
for a short time.
In nearly all cases they were headed north to the free states with
routes leading as far North as Canada.
Somewhat unique to Kansas is the recorded story about organised
trains that transported larger groups of slaves from one location for many miles,
Usually to a safe house before making their homeward journey.
After these trains had been established,
it gave room for station
masters to do short runs from one house to another with rest
stations in between.
In 1860 Charles Leonhardt,
a Polish American and committed abolitionist
journey with a group of like minded men and approximately 15 slaves
on one of the last trains of the underground railroad in Kansas.
Reverend John Stewart was their appointed leader.
They traveled an incredible distance of approximately 300 miles
from Lawrence, Kansas to Iowa City,
Iowa.
They traveled a rough,
north westerly route to avoid the more popular
lane trail that was being watched by slave catchers and pro-slavery
sympathizer.
Travelling in a train of four
to five horse drown wagons,
they transported men,
women, children and infants.
The road was not easy.
It often meant staying only a day or two,
ahead of masters of and slave
catchers.
There were close calls and heeded warnings from friends along the
way. Charles recorded their two month journey from Lawrence, South West
through the Wakarusa Range,
to Auburn, Harveyville, Wabaunsee
across the caw river north of Manhattan,
Centralia, on up into
Nebraska,
east of the Missouri river to their eventual destination in Iowa
City.
In what is one of the most detailed accounts on record,
they not
only escaped slave catchers and pro-slavery sympathizers,
but they
trail blazed the furthest western loop of the underground railroad
at the time. Charles recorded the names of some individuals including
descriptions of them and a few of their conversations.
Names like Blackhawk,
Blackjack, Nancy, Cate, My George, Johnny,
Joe and Ned.
Food was always scarce and fresh clothes and bedding were much appreciated.
Help that came was not always from the source one would expect.
Several different religious denominations and fellowships were organized
to come to their aid,
often providing news of followers that were
all too eager
to catch up with them.
It becomes clear reading the Leonhardt's journal that there was a
wide variety of opinions and positions that people had about slavery.
Yet through it all people of all faiths and political backgrounds
united to make their passage ways safe. Once they arrived to Iowa
City, some of the freed slaves settled.
Others were transported further north or back east to Boston.
It's interesting to note that many of these freed men were willing
to go to war and join the union army in the years to come.
In order for the underground railroad to be successful,
you had
to rely on way stations,
and relations of all friends to make it
from point to point.
[SOUND]
>> In order to understand the underground railroad in Kansas
prior to
1861, it's important to know who some of the key players were and their
perspectives.
[MUSIC]
>> Well the first group that we need to thank,
of course the
abolitionists, the people that came to Kansas with the express
purpose of stopping the spread of slavery, and we're talking about
people from the New England states usually driven here on religious
basis.
You have John Brown who is from back East, he is inspired by, you
don't wanna call it fanaticism but it's religious zeal.
And he is going to come to Kansas and he is going to do everything
that he can, he and his sons,
to eliminate the scourge of slavery
from the great plains.
>> He kinda matched the pace and tempo,
and the fever of
the Missouri ruffians?
>> Oh, absolutely! If not exceeding it. And he is memorialized here in
the capital, John Steuart Curry's great mural of him holding the
rifle in one hand, the bible in the other and those piercing eyes.
I mean it's just amazing to look at this character in history. They
want to stop slavery.
Kansas is the hotbed for it,
it's going to be up for popular sovereignty.
We got border ruffians,
people that cross the border from Missouri,
they're going to vote several times,
or try to vote several times
when the elections come up. And you know one of the other things
they try to do is intimidate people,
make sure they don't
vote, because they see Kansas is an agricultural hot bed.
It's a place where slavery can expand.
You got border ruffians like William Quantrill,
who leads the raids
into Lawrence.
Today we'd call it a terrorist attack,
they go in they murder males
randomly in the streets,
it depicts a time that's just hard for
us to fathom today.
>> Tell me a little bit about the two major compromises and how
that affected Kansans at that particular time in the 1850s before
it was a state.
>> I think back to Shelby Foote who was one of the best
civil war narrative writers of all time, and he said the one thing
about Americans is we tend to think of ourselves as uncompromising.
>> Yeah.
>> And yet it sees two compromises,
the compromise of 1820, the
compromise of 1850 that really set the stage for what becomes bleeding
Kansas.
[MUSIC]
>> So talk to me a little bit about this term that
we hear called Bleeding Kansas. >>
Bleeding Kansas is a term that Horace Greeley used.
He was the editor of the New York Times at the time and he was also
a fervent abolitionist, and it's a time where media sensationalism exists.
It's also a time where editors like Horace Greeley impact the
country.
Later we have the headline on the New York Tribune head west young
man, I mean, Greeley was this influential literary figure.
He speaks out about slavery and he sees bleeding Kansas as an insightful
term, a way to ignite the passions of the people of the country.
Greeley saw this as an opportunity to use that as a bit of propaganda
to promote what's happening in Kansas as kind of a microcosm of
the whole country and the fact that it's going to bring about the
civil war, or at least the
abolition of slavery which was his goal.
The south, they want to keep the balance in the senate and they need
to have some sort of concession to make the compromise of 1850
work.
So they allowed slave trade to occur in certain parts still allowed
in the capital. Politically speaking,
the compromise of 1850 is
doomed to fail and that's where we get the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act allows popular sovereignty to determine
what's going to happen in the new territories coming up.
And so, you have this political battle field that's going to be Kansas.
Will it be a free state,
will it be a slave state?
That's where you have the people from New England coming in,
you
have the Border Ruffians coming across from Missouri to try to make
Kansas a slave state and essentially is the first piece of tender to
ignite the powder keg that will be the civil war. >>
Amongst all this turmoil here in Kansas,
yet still, African Americans sought to come here to escape,
why?
>> You got the fugitive slave act that's enacted, and it's literally
a felony to aid and abet a slave, or even house a slave in
the North.
And so while there is still traffic on the underground railroad heading
up through the North and the Eastern states,
Kansas becomes kind
of a desirable route,
the spur that can circumvent some of the
hot spots where there are raiding parties waiting for slaves to
come North. And so Kansas becomes the spur of the railroad, as a
way to try and get slaves to the freedom of the North and Canada.
[MUSIC] >>
 
Talk to me from a teacher's perspective.
Why should kids want to know about this history in Kansas?
>> It's kind of funny,
clearer to the 1940s, 1950s Kansas is a political
hotbed.
The acts of William Allen White,
as a newspaper editor was
big.
Dwight D. Eisenhower comes from here
he's president in the
1950s. And Kansas was a good barometer,
of what was occurring
in the state.
You ask kids today is Kansas important?
We are just a bunch
of farmers. No, there was so much history to it.
And such powerful stories and you couch that in a story about what
is right, what is justice,
what does this country mean, and it's
a powerful story, there's heroes,
there's villains
and it can just draw you in,
but you know the biggest thing,
it starts the civil war and it's really what makes the United States
the United States.
Prior to the Civil War if you ask someone from Richmond Virginia,
who are you? I am a Virginian. It's after the civil war that that
same person would say I'm an American.
But here in Kansas it's the start of the modern United States in
my opinion.
[MUSIC]
 
>> I can picture a room full of people dancing.
>> I know.
I think that too.
Long dresses and yeah.
>> And I hear that
you have the connection to the underground railroad here in Kansas.
>> I do.
My great, great grandfather was a station master, on the underground
railroad.
My great grandfather was a conductor.
Joshua Smith was the older man and John was his son.
Joshua and his wife and a baby came from England,
then they went
to Utica, New York, then Lawrence then came out looking for land
and found land just west of the Indian Reservation which was huge
in those days.
>> What was his motivation to come?
>> He was looking for land.
He was an orchardist in England, and he was looking for land and
he found it and then went back and got his family.
And then he was here probably a year or so before the colony came
from New Haven, and then he
got very involved obviously in the underground railroad.
>> Why do you think they call it the underground railroad?
>> I've heard a story that somebody said is probably true,
but I
don't know that, that a master was chasing his slave and he said
he just disappeared.
It's like he went underground. I know that was at times, places and
then since they called it the underground railroad,
then they used
railroad terms for station master and conductor and such.
>> So tell me what a station master and conductor of the underground
railroad is.
>> Station master housed the slaves. And conductor obviously conducted
them to a safe place.
However, I found out that my great great grandfather conducted them
clear to Nebraska.
>> Okay.
>> It was very secret,
it had to be of course and my grandfather
told a story that his dad had told him
that they would come in the middle of the night with a wagon and
they just said, let's go.
And that the kids didn't know anything about it,
they couldn't have.
You know, if any of the children had known about what was going
on and had mentioned it to a friend-
>> Absolutely.
>> They would have all been in trouble.
So-
>> So do we have any idea where they hid the fugitives?
>> In the loft of the house and Joshua's house was right across
the road and down about a block from the Mitchel house.
And they were very good friends.
>> Do you think there were ever any close calls?
>> I'm sure there were. I have,
one of the things that my aunt wrote
down was that one of my great,
great aunts, someone came to the
house and said there are
->> Catchers or something.
>> And the people
were chasing the slaves in the area, and to be very careful.
And she said I have a big bucket of hot water on a
stove to throw on them.
[LAUGH]
They must have known.
>> Sure.
>> But she would have been an adult by that time.
>> What do you think would have happened if your great great grandfather
gotten caught?
>> Well, he went back to Lawrence to get his family and was accosted
on the way back, by border ruffians and he said that he thought
the only thing that saved his life was his prematurely gray hair
and his English accent.
He convinced them he didn't know anything about it.
>> [LAUGH]
>> But if they had though he had anything to do with
it they would have hung him on the spot.
>> I believe it too.
>> That's why I was so amazed when I found out that he took slaves
with a wagon to the Nebraskan line,
and I think that man had to
be very brave and very committed.
>> What do you think that's one of the determining factors that
pushed him to the anti slavery side?
>> I'd like to think that he thought it was just a very important
thing to do.
And I
think I'd probably be right because of what he did, he must have
thought it was the right thing to do.
[MUSIC]
>> During the 1850s Kansas was a territory governed by local
law enforcement and militias.
During that time emphasis was made
on the Fugitive Slave act of 1850,
virtually making it impossible
for anyone to remain neutral.
[MUSIC]
>> So this was built sometime after the civil war when the
economy recovered, there was the big drought of 1860 so there
nothing happened then, and this door used to open inward,
but
it's a great old building.
>> Share with me a little bit about
the role, the Wabaunsee Colony played with the underground railroad
here in Kansas.
>> The Beecher colony came in 1856 in the spring and before they
came out here they were greeted in Lawrence by the Free State leaders
and they pledged their allegiance that if Lawrence ever needed
them to come they would come and help. So when they got here, it was
just a matter of weeks before they were called and they formed
a militia called the Prairie Guards and the people in the Prairie
Guards were very knowledgeable of each other, and the Underground
Railroad started a year later when the families the women and children
had come by 1857 because the violence had subsided along the Kansas
river. And since they had formed all these alliances during the
height of the clashes then when it came time to help
enslaved the Africans seeking their freedom everybody knew each other
already, so somebody in Harveyville would help someone coming
from up the Wakarusa and then they'd go from Harveyville to
straight here sometimes through Mission Creek but all the people
helping knew each other.
>> Often times some of the kids didn't know what the parents were doing
as far as their Underground Railroad endeavors,
do you think that
was the case with Captain Mitchell and some of the other folks
that you just recently mentioned?
>> It's very interesting that you are bringing that up I think one
of the Smith children later in their memoir said, mum was making
so much food and we didn't know where it was going,
we weren't
eating it. >> [LAUGH]
In the case of the Mitchell's,
Captain Mitchell didn't actually marry
until well after the civil war,
he was living here with his sister
Agnes.
And so Agnes was the one that was cooking and caring for these freedom
seekers and it was she who mostly told the stories to the Mitchel
children. Because Captain Mitchell had also been to the California
gold rush and the Australian gold rush and he thought those stories
were much more interesting than the bleeding Kansas stories. So
as far as I have found the Mitchell children mostly got their stories
from their aunt.
>> Okay, were there any legacies that they inherited and
acted out on.
>> Yes actually there were four Mitchell children, and the ranch was
actually called the Big Four Ranch because they were all so tall.
Well
the eldest brother and the youngest brother worked for Hornaday
when he founded the New York Zoological Society it's now called
the Bronx zoo, and HR the eldest he was a major, he was like
the CEO of the place.
And so what I'm getting at is they were very educated and Maude
the only girl in the family,
she was an accomplished artist, she
had studied in New York and she felt it was her role to preserve
these stories, she helped get all the stories put in the 1930s WPA
tourist guide
that were published. She helped do the ground work to get the Beecher
Church put on the national register.
>> That's awesome, now we know that Captain Mitchell could have done
many other things, but why do you think he took a stand and put his
life in jeopardy and his sisters life in jeopardy?
>> Well this is very interesting. In my research I found that
a lot of these families were radicalized during the Amistad trial
in Connecticut in the late 1830s.
And we know that Captain Mitchell's father William Mitchell senior
was one of the founding members of an anti slavery society in
Middleton Connecticut.
The people during the Amistad trial,
it was all in the news and
the people would come and observe the trial and the former president
of the United States was one of the attorneys,
it was big news
back then and there was a lot of sympathy for these Africans who
wanted to go back to Africa.
So I think that's where it came from
and then this opportunity to act on those ideals came up,
so he
jumped at it and he had all these leadership skills from having
been through those experiences.
Can you imagine coming here in 1856 when as far as you could see
was just Tallgrass Prairie.
There were no trees here,
even along Antelope Creek here, and
that's where they had to go to harvest logs to build the original
log cabin which is now encased
in the rest of the house.
When it was first built,
it was just a log cabin about 16 by 12,
something like that, with an upper loft,
and then when Mitchell got
married, they jacked the house up and dug out a basement and made
a stone foundation, and then I think also at that time they added
this portion here and the front door used to be right here where
this window is, and we are really lucky Kate Buster, who is the
great great granddaughter,
she has authenticated and documented
every change to the house.
It was in the Mitchell family,
all the way up until the 70s when
the Crislers bought it.
And the fugitive slaves would have been-
>> Hidden in that loft area up there in that window.
>> That was made in the Maude's studio in the
1930s I think somewhere around there.
So the original loft isn't there anymore.
And what is so fascinating is that the Crislers have enabled anybody
to come by and look through the window and see the original logs
of the original cabin.
>> I bet there's more out here that people don't know about.
>> I think you may be right.
We're so fortunate to have the Crislers living here.
Because they've really embraced the history.
[MUSIC]
 
I get inspired every time I come here.
It gives me a chance to not think about what I have to do tomorrow,
I'm in the moment. What about you?
>> I get caught up in all the day to day activities,
but when I have a chance to reflect, yes, I feel like somebody is
looking over my shoulder.
>> Yeah me too.
>> Here is their little shrine to the pioneers and here we have Maude
Mitchell, and in this photo they are holding an original Beecher
Bible which is the sharps riffle, and then in this photo she is
holding an original Beecher bible, it's stamped by Henry Ward
Beecher's congregation.
>> Then we have Ethel here.
>> Ethel, Morgan
and this little plaque is in her memory, she was so beloved.
>> I think this was done in 1907 for the 50th anniversary of the
church and
Maude, Captain Mitchell's daughter was the artist.
>> Very great artist.
>> Of course here we have the bell,
want to ring the bell?
>> No you ring it, don't go up with it now.
>> They'll think there
is a fire
[SOUND]
 
The kids love to come do this.
[SOUND]
And I think the town is used to it,
there is a tour in town.
>> [LAUGH] Why do you think they chose Wabaunsee, why not stay in Lawrence or Topeka?
>>
We're very fortunate to have the company minutes from the time they
left New Haven, Connecticut until they formed the Wabaunsee town
company, so we know very specifically that they wanted their own
place, they didn't want to combine with anybody else.
And you had the Pottawatomie reservation that extended all the way
from Topeka to the edge of Mount Mitchell over here. So that land was off
limits for settlement, they wanted to be near the river,
they were
thinking of the future economy of the town,
they wanted the river because
at that time it was steam boat traffic.
>> What's strange to me is that, looking at Manhattan,
and Manhattan is
named for a town, back east,
Manhattan, New York.
And why do you think they didn't name this New Haven after the place where they
came from, some other town Connecticut?
>> That's a good question,
and again going back to the minutes there
were a lot of lively discussions about this.
They did want to name it.
Some of them wanted to name it New Haven,
and there were some heated
arguments about it, but Charles Lines,
who was the elected leader
of the colony, I think he was on business in Lawrence and there
was an old
Indian agent that had been around since the late 1830s, and he asked
him what would be a good name,
and he suggested Wabaunsa or Wabaunsee
and meaning, at the time interpreting it to mean dawn of day,
and
if you get into that it's much more nuanced than dawn of day,
but that's what the white people thought it meant and since they
had come from the East and were starting new lives,
they though
it was perfect.
>> Sure.
>> Like this underground railroad story is fascinating for so many
people and being unable to walk in the footsteps of these folks
is amazing to me.
I know that there were diverse people involved in the underground
railroad, and in this community.
Who are some of the unsung heroes
that we haven't heard about?
>> Since it was an illegal activity,
people at the time didn't really
talk about it very much even among the families.
But there was a great wave of nostalgia and reflection that started
in the 1870s and really culminated in 1879 at a mass of old settlers
meeting in Lawrence, and all this subjects came up.
We know that Captain Mitchell,
since his children perpetuated the
stories.
We know about them, but then we have people like the Platt brothers,
their father was Jireh Platt,
who was quite well known as an Underground
railroad station master in Mendon, Illinois
They were here and we have a photograph that a black woman had
made it to Canada and apparently got married and she sent a photograph
back to the Platt's and when their descendants gave these objects
to the Kansas State Historical Society this photograph was among
those pictures and from the family stories,
she was one of the people that the Platt brothers helped.
Then you have somebody like Sam Weed who was the uncle figure of everybody
and was known to imbibe occasionally.
We know that he helped because in one of the huge documented trains
that came through, they talk about him getting a plough to help
them cut down the bank of the river so they could cross the river.
Then there's mention that the Lines family,
Charles Lines and his
family had fugitive slaves staying with him.
The Kelsey family is mentioned and who knows, with the Internet
and family diaries appearing maybe we'll learn more in the future.
>> So, for kids nowadays,
what do you think they can take from the
story?
>> Richard Cordley, this minister who
was associated with this church.
He wrote about when the settlers first came,
they were so concerned
with their personal safety that everybody came together to fight
a common cause. And all petty differences were dropped.
They came together as Americans.
In their minds they were fulfilling
what the founding fathers had said was the promise of this country.
>> That's right.
>> And they felt very tied to that revolutionary spirit.
This church is a manifestation of that time and that feeling.
I think we're at another point where we need to come together as
Americans and face this unfinished business.
>> I agree.
>> We still haven't really dealt with race and a lot of people are
trying to sweep it under the rug, and
I have the hope that we will finally face it and deal with it.
>> If we don't give our kids the kind of examples that will bring
people together as opposed to the ones that separate us,
then
we'll never come together as Americans.
And I think the history has a job of telling us what we've done
together.
>> Exactly.
[MUSIC]
>> It's hard to imagine what it must have been like for fugitive
slaves making the long journey from the southern states up to the
free states and even north to Canada.
Even with help, the persecution they suffered,
the hunger, the
fatigue and the ever present fear of being caught
and separated from your family was terrifying.
In Leonhardt's journal we have a few glimpses of what it was really
like.
>> I was raised in Cumberland county,
North Carolina.
When old master Burgess died we all fell to different masters.
Don't know to this day where my folks had gone.
A few weeks ago, my master went to Pike's peak and took me along.
Made up my mind at the start that I'd go to the mountains and slip away
from master.
Some nights ago, I don't know how many,
master and other white trash
had been playing cards and drinking whiskey at camp and all got
terrible drunk.
In the morning, found all the white folks had left us.
When master got awfully mad at something I'd done or not done,
I
don't know exactly which,
he tries to give me a sound whipping.
But I would not.
I told him right to his face he better look out.
I wanna rest me a while till the war's over any how and white folks
that come after me, well I mean to fight with them.
I'm a free man now.
Black John.
1860.
>> The story of the last train demonstrated the need for alternative
pathways north.
Once an established route,
like the lane trail, became well known,
it became harder to avoid slave hunters and the law that would
have been on the side of slave owners during the territorial period.
You have to remember the abolitionists were considered the extremists
to many Americans at that time.
But the people of Wabaunsee saw things differently and helped not
only Leonhardt's group but others before and after the last train
passed through.
What is often missed in the story of slavery in America is that
these were refugees,
people stolen from their homeland and sold
into slavery and not just by white men.
They were treated more as cattle and property rather than as human
beings and yet they persevered.
So often we drive past places we think we know and don't stop to
think what really went on here.
In 1985, I first came to Manhattan,
Kansas as a student and was
introduced to some of the stories about the underground railroad.
As I began teaching and working with kids,
I've tried to share my
love of history with them.
To me, history is a current event.
Whatever came before us acts
upon our lives today.
I think examples are the key to anyone's success in growing up and
my mother gave me the best examples I could possibly ever had.
This caused me to survive difficult times and there was this relationship
that she had with a diversity of people in my community that let
me know that there was another side to the story other than the
ones I had heard at school.
I was born and raised in Pleasantville,
New Jersey and we have a
boardwalk in the town right next door to us,
in Atlantic City, and we would
go to the boardwalk,
we'd go swimming, or we would go to the boardwalk,
they had three piers,
a million dollar pier, steeplechase pier
and the steel pier.
Well on the steel pier,
they had a show where this high diving horse
would do this fantastic feat and go up this ramp
and dive off into this pool.
it was an amazing experience for a young man like myself and as
we left there, we decided to go to the wax museum.
And inside this
wax museum we saw kings,
queens, Hollywood movie stars, it was
fascinating because I had never experienced a piece of wax to look
like that, and at the very end,
something happened. My mom always
told us that there's two types of alarm clocks,
there's an alarm clock
when you need to be on time for school or whatever,
and then there's
an alarm clock when something special happens,
a graduation or
birth of a baby and my alarm clock went off, cuz there was a diorama
that pictured an African family and they were in loincloth, near
bones in their nose
and plates in their lips.
And then there was this sign and the sign said savages.
I said these folks look like me,
and I had a curiosity to know if
that was true, well my sister couldn't answer it,
but my mother did
and she told me that it is true, that there are folks in Africa
that decorate themselves accordingly,
but the reality is not all
African people look
like that, and then in America she said not all Americans
looked the same.
Everybody has their own way of dressing and beautifying themselves.
She said, but the sign,
that was a person's or that museum's way
of displaying racial superiority.
You have come from more than just slavery,
she told me, and it's
up to you to figure out your journey.
And so from that point on,
I really wanted to know, did we do anything
besides being enslaved and if so what did we do?
And it's an important question to ask today and that's because
African Americans and people in general do not know their own
history.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
Not too far from the town of Wabaunsee is the remains of one
of the Platt brother's homesteads.
Enoch, Luther and Jeremiah settled in this area,
shortly after the
New Haven Colony arrived.
As young men in Illinois,
they experienced the struggle of abolitionists,
by helping their parent hide and transport
run away slaves to the north.
Hearing a call for the free state movement,
they came down to the
Kansas territory to help in the cause.
They were farmers, builders,
and preachers.
Two of them went on to teach at universities here in Kansas and
one to eventually help start a school for freed men after the
civil war.
Not much is known about the slaves they helped here in Wabaunsee,
but we
do have clues.
Years after the civil war,
the Platts received a few photographs
from former slaves, men and women who we assumed they helped along
their path North.
Looking at these faces with no names,
we can only wonder what they
experienced, and what gratitude they felt when they finally had their
freedom.
Perhaps some day, we will learn their names,
where they lived and what became of their families.
[MUSIC]
 
 
 
It is estimated that there are as many as
35 abolitionist are buried in the Wabaunsee Cemetery.
It's hard not to feel a closeness to the people who lived and died
in this small community.
Their lives of sacrifice,
their struggle to do the right thing,
inspire us to keep up the cause and to make things better for
the next generation.
But it was not just abolitionists who did who did a great work here,
the generations that would follow after them helped build a community
where travelers or freed men and women felt safe.
Many go unnamed, and many are yet to be discovered,
but their lives
will carry on.
If we pass on their stories,
if we make their lives a sacrifice known.
>> To collect all these stories and provide that narrative of what the
Underground Railroad is about,
that's something that
needs to be done and so that we can honor those people that did
this great work, this right thing.
If they could do it 106 years ago why not do it today and that's
a great benefit of the story.
The fact that
it shows that as human beings we're capable of doing the right thing.
>> It means a lot to me,
to know that my family was so involved
and so dedicated to this.
I ask children when I come in,
do you know about the Underground
Railroad?
And I'm finding in most cases,
in about the third grade during black
history month, they learn about the Underground Railroad,
and
a lot of children are very interested in what I have there.
But I think it's something that children should be taught.
[SOUND]
 
>> What legacy do you think Captain
Mitchell left
behind for us?
>> Do the right thing.
Follow the humanity that your ancestors have passed down
to you. In his case he was a Christian and followed the precepts
of Christianity, do unto others as they would do unto you,
and
he heard all that as a young child in Middletown, Connecticut.
>> How do you see him in yourself?
>> I have thought about that,
and I must confess in my whole involvement
with the Mitchell's I have been more inspired by Maude, I guess because
she's more recent.
She never married and she devoted her life to preserving the stories
of the pioneers.
It's her desire, her passion
to keep those stories of the pioneers alive.
That's really what's inspired me,
but of course Captain Mitchell and
Sister Agnes,
they were the source of inspiration for Maude.
>> Sure.
>> So in a way it just kinda passes down.
>> I think one of the things that inspires me about all of
these folks, Captain Mitchell being the leader, is the fact that sometimes you have
to take a stand.
>> Yeah.
>> Like you said earlier,
and not always is it going to be popular.
It means that you're probably going to alienate some folks,
but
you know in your heart when something is right and when something
is wrong.
I see that part of the legacy of all these people has played out
in my own life in a number of different ways.
That's what history does for us.
It allows us to see that people have done remarkable things.
Not without big armies but you know sometimes with just a few that
escalates.
But somebody has to start it.
[MUSIC]
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
[BLANK_AUDIO]
