Presbyterian News Service
06264 May 11, 2006
Oh Freedom!
800 Cincinnati Presbyterians to gather at Underground Railroad center
by Jerry L. Van Marter
CINCINNATI -- When Cincinnati Presbytery
(http://www.presbyteryofcincinnati.org/) decided to forego its regular May meeting in order to gather at the Underground Railroad Freedom Center to learn more about the legendary anti-slavery movement, presbytery staffer Carol Winkler didn't know quite what to expect.
"We'd never done anything like this before," she told the Presbyterian News Service a few days before the May 15 event at the Freedom Center, "but I've been pleasantly surprised to say the least."
More than 800 Presbyterians (and others) have registered for the four hour event Monday afternoon and evening, more than four times the number of presbyters who normally show up for presbytery meetings.
"Having this event gives all of us an opportunity to recognize and affirm our participation in the struggle for freedom," says the Rev. Clarence Wallace, pastor of Carmel Presbyterian Church. Wallace is one of four pastors who came to Cincinnati in the 1960s and 1970s to combine pastoral ministry with the fight for racial justice and who will tell their stories during the event. The others are the Revs. Duane Holm, Paul Long and Richard Sellers.
At one time, Sellers visited a Presbyterian church near where he lived and was turned away, told that "the church for him' was in another part of town. Sixteen years later he returned as pastor of the church from which he was turned away.
Another story that will be told is that of Margaret Garner, a slave in Boone County, KY, on whom the lead character in Toni Morrison's best-seller Beloved was based. Garner and her owner were both members of Richwood Presbyterian Church in Kentucky. Garner's tragic story -- she killed her children rather than give them up to the slave conditions she endured during her life -- will be told by her descendents.
Church members and another descendent of slaves, Jim Sleet Lett, will tell other stories of the church's role in slave life.
The Rev. Lisa Corum Fox, pastor of West Union Presbyterian Church, will tell stories she's compiling into a book about ministers who came to the area from North and South Carolina in the early 1800s to aid in the freedom movement. She'll tell of the role faith played in their journeys and will share coded letters written by Underground Railroad participants to avoid detection.
Young people from the West Union church will tell stories about conditions in the region during the first half of the 19th century and Thelma Poff will portray "Mrs. Rankin" -- dramatizing the efforts of she and her husband, the Rev. John Rankin, in Ripley, OH, a key point along the Underground Railroad.
Author Anne Hagedorn will read from her book, Beyond the River: the Untold Stories of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad, about the men and women, black and white, who fought "the war before the war" to rescue
fleeing slaves along the Ohio River.
A massed "freedom choir," directed by Chris Miller of Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church, will open the event with a medley of Negro spirituals.
And the exhibits of the Underground Railroad Freedom Center will be open to those in attendance.