Visitors are welcome to wander the grounds before and after the presentation. Where: Fort Mose State Park, in the Visitor Center Media Room. Those who wish to tour the small museum need only pay $2.00 per person. Not literally a railroad, but secret tunnels of routes and safe houses for southern slaves to escape to Canda for their freedom before the Civil War ended. Augustine.Īdmission: Free for the presentation. Wherever slavery existed, there were efforts to escape, at first, to maroon communities in rugged terrain away from settled areas. They will bring to life the extreme conditions that often led to the decision to seek freedom over slavery, as they reenact the first leg of the Underground Railroad, which led to St. The Underground Railroadthe resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, through the end of the Civil Warrefers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage. Their presentation will be held in the Fort Mose Historic Park Visitor Center Media Room. Twila Hudson, educator and reenacter, and highly regarded local volunteer. Dorothy Israel, author, educator, amateur historian and Ms. The event will be presented by two revered local historians and reenacters: Dr. the Fort Mose State Park and Fort Mose Historical Society host a theatrical reenactment of the extreme challenges undertaken by slaves who escaped and traveled south to St. Caesar proposes an escape via the Underground Railroad, which Cora initially refuses. These and other refugees fleeing slavery through the southern “underground railroad” all benefited from Mexico’s willingness to give them a safe haven.On, Saturday, November, 19, 2022 at 10:30 a.m. In this story, Cora and Caesar are slaves at the Randall estate in Georgia. “It still belongs to their descendants and they still live there to this day in Mexico,” Hammack says. Later, in 1852, Seminole groups that included runaway enslaved people successfully petitioned the Mexican government for land. Lundy’s plan to start a free colony in Mexico’s Texas region was thwarted when it separated from Mexico and legalized slavery. In the early 1830s, Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lundy “was actively petitioning the Mexican government to allow for colonies to be established for, I guess what we would consider now, refugees.” “I have come across abolitionists from the north who were going to Mexico to petition Mexico to allow them to buy land to establish colonies for runaway slaves and free blacks,” Hammack says. In addition, some northern abolitionists traveled south to help enslaved people reach Mexico. Her husband, Nathaniel Jackson, was the son of the man whose plantation she used to work on. The wife, Matilda Hicks, was a formerly enslaved woman. Hammack and researcher Roseann Bacha-Garza have also identified a mixed-race family from Alabama who moved to southern Texas near the Rio Grande and helped enslaved people escape to Mexico. The Fugitive Slave Act increased federal and free-state responsibility for the recovery of fugitive slaves, appointing federal commissioners empowered to issue warrants for their arrest. READ MORE: How the Underground Railroad Worked Even if this wasn’t logistically possible, the imagery of floating to freedom on a symbol of slavery was strong. Stories spread about enslaved people who crossed the Rio Grande river dividing Texas from Mexico by floating on bales of cotton, and several Texas newspapers reported in July 1863 that three enslaved people had escaped this way. Some went on foot, while others rode horses or snuck aboard ferries bound for Mexican ports. Once Tom got across the border, he joined the Mexican military that Houston had fought against.įugitive enslaved people got to Mexico in many different ways. Houston was a president of the Republic of Texas who’d fought in the Texas Revolution. Hammack has discovered one runaway named Tom who had been enslaved by Sam Houston. as a state in 1845.Įnslaved people in Texas were aware that there was a country to the south where they could find different levels of freedom (though indentured debt servitude existed in Mexico, it was not the same as chattel slavery). Once they formed the Republic of Texas in 1836, they made slavery legal again, and it continued to be legal when Texas joined the U.S. Mexico abolished slavery in 1829 when Texas was still part of the country, in part prompting white, slave-holding immigrants to fight for independence in the Texas Revolution.
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