Denise Dallmer | An Innovative Summer Institute for Teachers: Examining the Underground Railroad | The History Teacher, 35.4

An Innovative Summer Institute for Teachers: Examining the Underground Railroad

Denise Dallmer
Northern Kentucky University

THROUGH MY INVOLVEMENT with the Institute for Freedom Studies at Northern Kentucky University, whose purpose is to promote interdisciplinary research, teaching and community outreach grounded in the study of the Underground Railroad, I planned a one-week (all-day) summer institute with follow-up sessions to be held during the fall semester. The purpose of the institute was to study the historical/cultural context of the Underground Railroad in the geographic area of Kentucky and Ohio. I used a multidisciplinary approach to examine our local history in order to study contemporary issues of freedom, equity, and civil rights. Most of my students were classroom teachers from Ohio and Kentucky. The intent was for the teachers to use the knowledge they gained to make this aspect of our region's unique history come alive for their students. Before discussing the details of the course, however, it is necessary to understand something of the problems involved in teaching this topic and the special significance it has for Kentucky and Ohio teachers.

The Underground Railroad is a part of American history that has been surrounded by a cloud of folklore. For some, the Underground Railroad conjures up visions of secret passageways, tunnels connecting basements to rivers, hidden rooms, and other mythical notions. Typically the story is told that benevolent white abolitionists, mainly from the North helped poor, hapless runaways escape. Only by these means did enslaved persons make it to freedom. More truthfully, however, the Underground Railroad was not a well-connected system for helping people escape; in fact, it was a loose coordination of abolitionists along with free blacks and fugitive slaves who helped others escape to freedom. Certainly, there were people willing to provide food and shelter along escape routes, but the popular myth of a centralized nationwide "railroad" is false (Gara, 1996).

Many college students only learn about the Underground Railroad in an African American history course and many K-12 students only learn about the Underground Railroad during "Black History" month. For other students, this part of American history is never mentioned. This is unfortunate because the importance of the Underground Railroad movement is that it was the first civil rights movement and represents a multi-racial effort to achieve freedom. It was a liberation movement in which the heroes were both black and white. And for fugitive slaves it represented a non-violent approach to gaining freedom. The Underground Railroad thus represents an aspect of American history in which we can study courage, bravery, determination, and creativity. Additionally, studying the Underground Railroad offers an opportunity for students to engage in an ongoing critique of democracy in practice.

The topic is of special interest to schools in the Ohio River valley. In Cincinnati, Ohio and in Kentucky there were both pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces, which contributed to the Underground Railroad's accessibility and danger. This was especially true after the passage of the Fugitive Slave law in 1850. Cincinnati history and Kentucky history are filled with legends and myths about the Underground Railroad. Levi Coffin, a Cincinnatian, is frequently referred to as the "President of the Underground Railroad." The Ohio River itself signaled freedom to people trying to escape. In fact, the Ohio River was often referred to as the "River Jordan." In summer, enslaved persons could walk across the shallow river when trying to escape, and in winter, they could walk across on the ice. On the other hand, it was a barrier since many people spent time hiding out in Kentucky waiting for the right time to cross. The Ohio River was a place of interaction and confrontation between those on both sides of the slavery issue: some people hid, others chased, and still others aided those escaping. The Ohio River is important in telling the story of the Underground Railroad since its borderlands provided access to enslaved persons attempting to flee the South. The river formed the border between Ohio and Kentucky for 150 miles and between Ohio and western Virginia for another 200 miles (Ripley, 1998).

There was not as great a number of slaves in Kentucky as in other parts of the South, but Kentucky was used as a breeding ground and the slave trade was a moneymaker for Kentucky. Kentucky played an important role in selling enslaved persons to New Orleans or other destinations in the Deep South. Recently, a slave pen which was used as a holding cell for enslaved persons about to be sold South has been discovered in Kentucky. The saying, "sold down the river" refers to this phenomenon. However, there was a large free black population in Cincinnati and Covington, Kentucky, which added to the number of people who could aid in Underground Railroad activities. There are many famous people from both sides of the river in the history of the Underground Railroad such as Levi Coffin, John Rankin, John Parker, John Fee, Margaret Garner, and Harriett Beecher Stowe. These local historical figures were central to the struggle for freedom in the United States. Some of these names were unfamiliar to the students in my class although their place in history is important. More significantly, their stories are often told in our geographic area.

Institute Activities

I used a variety of teaching strategies in this summer institute that required active student participation because a didactic approach to instruction often permits students to remain somewhat uninvolved. The first days of the week were spent hearing guest speakers, both from the university and the local community. They explained the myths that many of us were taught when we studied the Underground Railroad in school as students ourselves. The guest speakers clarified the role that Ohio and Kentucky played within the national scope of the Underground Railroad. They engaged the teachers in class discussions about how to teach a class where "tensions could run high" and they emphasized how important it is for teachers to handle the Underground Railroad carefully and accurately.

On campus, we watched a video about the Underground Railroad produced by Kentucky's public television network (KET). We spent time researching web sites about the Underground Railroad and as a class we reached a decision about what sort of website we wanted to create. (Creating a website was one of the class requirements.) We wanted it to be useful to other classroom teachers and more important, we wanted it to present our local history. A technology coordinator from a local school district helped us design our website (www.nku.edu/~undergroundrr). Our intent was that when we were out in the field we would take pictures using a digital camera to help document our process of learning and to showcase the local history that we learned. Our other purpose was to post our pictures and the lesson plans our seminar participants would create on this website. They would then be useful later for the teachers in the seminar and for teachers in other schools across the country (See Appendix A for a lesson plan example).

The collaboration on campus was one strength of the class; the other vital aspect was making seminar participants aware of the community resources available to them. They learned of local grassroots efforts being made to study and research Underground Railroad history in the Ohio/Kentucky area. Many of these local groups are non-profit organizations or individuals who have been studying this history without any kind of large institutional support. Meeting these groups and individuals provided information not found in traditional texts. In order to prepare the students for their fieldwork, a class requirement was to read the autobiography of John Parker (Sprague, 1996). John Parker was a former enslaved person who bought his freedom and eventually settled in Ripley, Ohio, which was a thriving abolitionist community at the time. In Ripley, we met with the local expert who clarified for us the role that Ripley played in the Underground Railroad movement. He wove stories for us about John Rankin, John Parker, and other local heroes, which added to the richness of our class. We visited the John Parker house, which is currently under restoration. We toured the John Rankin house, home of the Presbyterian abolitionist minister, and stood on the steps of his house, which has a breathtaking view of the Ohio River. We drove to a local church in Red Oak, Ohio, the home of a community of abolitionists who helped people move through Ohio into Canada, and examined the cemetery markers behind the church. By being out in the field, the students began to realize the importance of our local history in the context of the Underground Railroad movement.

On the Kentucky side of the river we went to Maysville and met with the local historians, museum curators, and researchers who wanted to share their knowledge about the Underground Railroad with us. We argued some about the role Kentucky played in the Underground Railroad. We examined primary sources from the courthouse such as wills, marriages, and deeds. These primary documents furnished the teachers with a true feeling of what the past was like, and a vision about how complex the issues of slavery and freedom were (and still are). We wondered how people could deed human beings to their descendents and we discussed the ramifications of those actions. We walked the streets of Old Washington, Kentucky where Harriett Beecher Stowe witnessed the slave auction that moved her to write Uncle Tom's Cabin. We handled slave artifacts (such as wrist and ankle shackles) shown to us by a private collector. We visited the local historical museum and learned more Kentucky history. Throughout the week, the teachers talked about how to use this new knowledge back in their classrooms (see our website to review our pictures from this fieldwork).

Student Assignments and Outcomes

Students were given both traditional and non-traditional assignments. They were asked to write research papers about the Underground Railroad movement not unlike assignments in other history classes. In groups, they were to research and analyze Internet sites about the Underground Railroad. They were to locate sites that they found accurate and applicable to the local history we had learned. For the classroom teachers in the class, the assignment was to take their newfound knowledge back to their K-12 classrooms and to design and videotape themselves teaching new curriculum. The intent was that they were to connect the new knowledge to the practice of teaching. We reconvened our class four months later to view the results of their efforts. (For an example see Appendix A, a lesson plan). The teachers modeled for each other the use of such resources as 1) books which visually depict the inhumanity of slavery; 2) literature which they used with their students in teaching this subject; 3) CD's which can use music to tell oral history; 4) artifacts such as quilts; 5) the use of videos as teaching tools; 6) class discussions about race and equity; 7) the ways in which they incorporated local history into their curriculum, and 8) the strategies they used to integrate content specific material they learned in this institute. I received funding through our state humanities council for books and materials for teachers to use in their classrooms. We will update our website as the teachers test out their lesson plans and therefore the website will always be under construction. We also plan to present our class "findings" at local schools and professional conferences.

There were seventeen students in my institute. There were teachers from one urban school and several from both rural schools and suburban schools. The group included male and female students; one person was African American, the others were Caucasian. The teachers came from elementary, middle and secondary schools. Pre- and post-tests showed that not only had participants enhanced their knowledge of facts and resources but that they had become more confident about constructing teaching units and planning field trips relating to the Underground Railroad. Many teachers stated that they had never been taught "the real story." They had grown up in the Cincinnati/northern Kentucky area, gone to public schools and universities, but still had no real knowledge about the events and places that are directly related to the Underground Railroad in our area. In particular, they had been taught that "slavery wasn't that bad in Kentucky" and they were shocked to hear and experience this history. The institute opened their eyes to new ideas, and provided them new knowledge and strategies for teaching K-12 students in the Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati area (see Appendix B)

Integrating technology is an ongoing struggle for me in my teaching and a source of debate among professors. Therefore, collaborating with the technology person from the local school district was essential to the goals I had for the class. Our time was not spent learning how to build a website or even technological applications but, instead, the students concentrated on the material and the historical content. Our collaborator did (and still does) all the maintenance of the website which allowed the class to focus on the curriculum. I didn't want to get weighted down with the technical aspects of creating a website—content, historical accuracy, and showcasing our local history was my intent. Because neither my time nor the students' time was consumed by constructing the website, the students reaped the benefits of having the common purpose of discussing what content to put on the website. It was designed to provide access for the institute participants who are now back in their classrooms. They now share this site with others in their field and they communicate with each other. As Thurston (2001) explains: "Computer networks used to create and enhance social networks can lead to innovative educational partnerships and can help to transform the teaching of history. In the final analysis, web development is always a form of social practice...the building of those distributed social networks that we scholars more often refer to as communities" (181).

Conclusions

The implications of my experience for improving K-12 teaching by short summer seminars are multi-layered since I believe that pedagogy and content are interwoven in the practice of teaching. In particular I think I demonstrated how valuable it is to use collaborative assignments and community resources to help teachers provide future resources for the K-12 students. I demonstrated new ways to hold classes outside of the traditional classroom walls and showed that it is important to follow up summer institutes with subsequent meetings to check their effectiveness and to show that teaching and learning do not stop when the institute is finished. Developing a class curriculum that is innovative and unique shows students that professors and universities can be flexible and respond to the needs of their students.

Other teachers and professors can replicate my approach to teaching history by working collaboratively with grassroots efforts in their area. The context for my class was the Underground Railroad, but there are other local projects across the country that professors/teachers of history can become involved with. Others can examine their geographic area and design a course by asking themselves: "What are the local myths, events, and historic eras that impacted my area? How can I use historic sites (beyond superficial field trips) to find out the real story and then to link it to other areas in the country? How do I help students examine primary sources and do historical research? How can I teach students to evaluate websites and popular sources?"

The strength of the institute was that the students listened to a variety of experts give their perspectives and insights about the same topic. Making the past accessible to students by studying local history provides a starting point for studying history. It provides a new methodology to teaching which requires a collaborative partnership with grassroots efforts as well as the ability to let others share in the responsibility of teaching college material. The lived tension of American history became clear to my students and they are now considering the inferences for our present and future history.

Appendix A:
Primary Sources of the Underground Railroad

Pam Brennan, Ruth Moyer Elementary, Ft. Thomas, KY

SUBJECT: American History GRADE: Fifth

TOPIC: Underground Railroad/Primary Sources LENGTH: One hour

OBJECTIVES:

Students will compare and contrast two different historical perspectives of the same story.

Students will deduce what a primary source is.

Students will evaluate potential historical sources.

MATERIALS:

His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad. Edited by Stuart Seely Sprague.

Freedom River by Doreen Rappaport.

Several different historical sources as deemed appropriate by the teacher.

PROCEDURE:

Have the students answer the following two questions in their American History notebooks:

What is history?

How do historians know they are accurately telling the story?

Discuss the students' answers to the above questions.

Tell the students you are going to read to them the same story as told by two different people. Read aloud Freedom River by Doreen Rapport and pages 105-117 from His Promised Land.

Make a large Venn Diagram on the board. Compare and contrast the two different versions of the story. Discuss.

Ask students what story they think is more historically accurate and give reasons.

Tell students that historians use primary sources to recreate historical stories.

Help students to deduce the meaning of a primary source.

ASSESSMENT:

Share with students several sources of historical information. Through class discussions, help them to evaluate which sources would be considered primary sources.

RESOURCES:

The Autobiography of John Parker—Duke University Special Collections Library www.duke.edu/~njb2/history391/parker/parker.html

The Faces of Science: African Americans in the Sciences www.lib.lsu.edu/lib/chem/display/faces.html

Appendix B:
Teacher Summaries

The Underground Railroad class was one of the best classes I have ever taken. I just finished my Master's Degree in education, and I learned more that I actually use in my classroom in the Underground Railroad class, than in any other class I have taken.

As a Junior English teacher, I teach a unit on Civil War literature and my kids hate it. We live in a rural KY county where there is a very small African American population. My students just didn't see why this literature related to them. I signed up for the URR class in the hopes that I would learn something that would help me do a better job of teaching Civil War literature in a way that would interest my kids.

And, learn I did. The instructor of our class brought in guest speakers who addressed issues related to the URR, as well as discussing ways we could get our students interested in the subject even if they felt like this issue wasn't related to them.

The best-learning tool that was used was the field trips we took to Ripley, Ohio and Maysville, Kentucky. These field trips showed me the history that is right under my nose. We visited actual URR sites and local experts led us on tours of these historical towns. Even though I'm not a big history buff, I was enthralled by the stories of the URR and the URR sites we visited that are right in our backyard.

Because of what I learned in the URR summer course, I couldn't wait to teach the Civil War literature unit this year. I used much of the literature I was given in this class to create an URR bulletin board and to arrange a project about the history of slavery. Most importantly though, I knew enough about the local history of the URR to get my students interested. The URR was no longer just something that they read about in a textbook. It was something that happened right here; something our own ancestors might have been involved in. Suddenly, they saw their own personal connection to the URR.

The experiences I had in the URR class helped me to bring the URR to life for my students. These real life stories of local people helped my students to see that this isn't just history. It's real life stories about real life people who struggled and fought for freedom which all of them take for granted everyday.

The information I was able to share with my students because of the URR class, was much more powerful than the two pages of Frederick Douglass's autobiography that are in our textbook. I hope that I was able to make them feel the same emotions that I felt when I held the slave shackles in my hands at the museum located in Old Washington, Kentucky (where Harriet Beecher Stowe saw the slave auction that inspired her to write Uncle Tom's Cabin). If they feel these emotions then hopefully they will come closer to understanding what African Americans have gone through in this country, and that understanding is one step closer to acceptance.

Angela Rice
English Teacher
Grant County High School, Kentucky

The Underground Railroad summer institute was a very unique way for students to learn and not in the traditional sense. It was definitely not a "sit and get" type of class. We experienced a different type of learning, and since it was local history it was extremely meaningful.

The students were exposed to guest speakers, local experts, and actual artifacts. We took field trips to stops on the Underground Railroad and this part of history became personal to all involved. Some of us were speechless and all were horrified by the reality of what had occurred during this period in history. It became a mission for each of us to bring this story to life to our students as it had been brought to life for us.

Experiencing local history rather than being "lectured to" about history proved an invaluable way to learn. Many of the students asked if they could sign up for the class a second time just to relive the experience. This summer institute not only taught us about local history, but how to be better teachers.

Cynthia Baker
Three Rivers Middle School
Covington City Schools, Kentucky

A man had himself shipped in a box that was 2 feet wide, 3 feet long, and 2 feet deep for eight days to reach Philadelphia. Ellen Craft, a very light skinned slave, posing as a male slave-owner and her husband William, posing as her attentive slave made it freedom. These are just some of the stories I learned when I took the course on the Underground Railroad. I never expected it to impact me as much as it did. I didn't know very much about the topic and I wondered, as an elementary school teacher, how this could be beneficial in the classroom.

When the class was over I realized it had impacted me in several ways, both personally and professionally. The first area was the reality of it all. I have gained a whole new perspective and knowledge of this time in history. Using stories and places from and around the area I live made it very real to me. Margaret Garner lived right down the street from where I teach. She fled to a place in Covington near where my husband has an office. How much more real can it get? The locality and how deeply the state of Kentucky was involved in the business are astonishing to me.

There were a tremendous number of guest speakers throughout the course with a wealth of information. The great thing was we didn't just get one side of the story. Speakers and tour guides on field trips were both African American and Caucasian. They all had stories about the Underground Railroad and even some of their ancestors were involved. I loved listening to all of their stories, information, and perspectives. They were so passionate about this subject that they instilled in me a curiosity for the topic.

I'm amazed by how much research these people have completed. They were so wonderful to offer any help or guidance in the future. They also gave extremely sound advice on how to relate it to students and how to implement the ideas into the classroom. I gained so much knowledge it was almost overwhelming to decide how to use it in a third grade classroom of predominantly Caucasian students.

Another thing that impacted me was how much we all learned from each other as educators. The mixture of people taking the course added to its appeal. There were teachers from kindergarten to high school, in all subject areas. At first it seemed that that might be a hindrance. Why would I care how teachers would teach it in high school? In the end, it was a great benefit. Through discussions, lesson plans, and time spent in historical places together, everyone had something to bring which ranged from little knowledge and perspective to a lot. Talking with teachers, no matter what grade or expertise, who knew exactly what I go through on a day-to-day basis, is a wonderful way to learn from each other. Everyone's openness and willingness to participate truly helped make it a learning experience.

The last thing that impacted me was the reaction of my own students. Part of the course was designing a lesson plan and teaching it to my students. I struggled with this in the beginning. How could I integrate it into what I had to teach to eight and nine year-olds? The teaching of life skills is a very important part of my school's curriculum. When I taught the life skill of cooperation, I used the Underground Railroad as an example. The Underground Railroad consisted of both black and white people working together towards a common goal. Even people with differences, whether in color or ideas, could work together to reach a goal. I then used literature to teach the children about this time in history. They read books, wrote in their journals answering reflective questions, and then completed a project to present to the class. They saw the lengths to which people went to reach an important goal. They saw how determined people were in this area to reach freedom. Students learned they could overcome any hardship. Lastly, they saw the immorality of it all. From the beginning their interest was captured and they were excited about learning. They had never been taught about this before, so it was something new. I continue to refer to the Underground Railroad as topics in life and history come up in the classroom.

Kristina Sickmeier
Erpenbeck Elementary
Boone County, Kentucky

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