"We talked about how history is written by survivors," he said. To travel in this way, takes an immeasurable amount of strength, he said. He may be out biking in the elements, but it wasn't in the dark, on foot, with people hunting him and hopefully they had a guide who was half as good as Harriet Tubman, he said. Goodrich said that during his trips, he was aware that he would be riding his shiny bike, always with the security of knowing where he was going and where he would be staying that night. "You can still see the the streets that Frederick Douglass came up when he was when he made his break for freedom," Goodrich said. There were also remnants from other Black historical figures. When the Society said they didn't have any money to give her, she sat in front of the building, fell asleep, and by morning she had a can full of money that she could use. It was there that Harriet Tubman tried to get money to go back to Maryland and free her mother and father from slavery. He also remembers being in lower Manhattan during his Harriet Tubman route, and saw an eyebrow threading salon in the place where the Anti Slavery Society once stood. "And then as he was midway through the river, this is in the dark of night, he sees torches, from either side, kind of converging on the people who were left the slave hunting gangs," he said. "There were cases would describe where he had a boat that just did not have enough room in it for everyone who was there on shore, and he had to leave two people," Goodrich said. The Ohio River was a place of commerce by day but shifted to tragedy, life and death by night, Goodrich said. In Ripley, Ohio, a Black man named John Parker would make rescue trips into Kentucky to bring the slaves to safety, Goodrich said. On his route along the Ohio River, which was a hub of trade during the the time of slavery, the stories of the people who would cross from slave state Kentucky into other states with safe houses stuck out to him.įlatlands line the Ohio River, leaving people few hiding spots from the slave gangs that would be hunting for them, even under the cover of darkness. "You might think, 'Oh, I, my ancestors must have been heroically helping people along the Underground Railroad,' when that isn't necessarily the way it works," he said.Īnd with each ride, and each story he learned, he found himself humbled and in awe of the history and resilience of people who risked their lives traveling on the Underground Railroad. A museum in Bristol, England, has all the records of the people taken and shipped to slavery, he said. One of his ancestors was a ship captain on the Middle Passage and carried slaves from Africa to Jamaica. Goodrich said he had to approach this journey with humility. Finally, he followed the Ohio River, stopping by places that are important in the history of the Underground Railroad. He pedaled his way from New Orleans, Louisiana, through Mississippi and the Delta Blues. He followed Harriet Tubman's route from Maryland's Eastern Shore to Ontario, Canada.
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