I watched Tuesday’s Jan. 6 hearing in bed at home while recovering from COVID. The testimonies of Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman brought me to tears.
Shaye Moss loved her job once. She loved how it connected her with her grandmother’s generation who struggled to secure the right to vote. Now she’s getting death threats.
I keep thinking about how welcoming both Black and white communities were to me on my bike ride. A Black man in Alabama shared free BBQ ribs with me, a total stranger. An extended white family in Mississippi invited me to their family potluck.
Abolitionists of the past glimpsed those possibilities— of real democratic living.
At the same time, during the short course of my ride, a grocery store has been shot up by a white man driven by the racist fantasies of “replacement theory” promoted on conservative media. And people like Shaye Moss have had their lives torn apart in an organized effort to undermine democracy—to undermine everything abolitionists fought for: freedom, agency, liberty.
The people who are intimidating election workers in 2022 are not the same people who sent bounty hunters after fugitive slaves in 1852, but they are singing the same song.
The ark of the moral universe is not bending towards justice on its own. It needs our help.
One of the great joys of a road trip— especially a bicycle road trip— is reading the historical markers along the way. There’s something about reading about a place while standing right there, in that place.
So, I’ll close by introducing you to some of the people I met on my short journey:
5/17 Andrew Jackson Smith (The Andrew Jackson Smith Highway)
From the historical marker:
Medal of Honor Recipient
Born a slave in Lyon County, KY on Sept. 3, 1843. Smith was wounded at the Battle of Shiloh. Learning that the Emancipation Proclamation allowed Blacks to join the Union Army, he enlisted in the 56th Mass Colored Vol Infantry, May 16, 1863
5/24 Abraham Lincoln (Cloverport, KY)
As a child, Abraham Lincoln left Kentucky, landless and poor, after his parents suffered several setbacks, including a conflict over conflicting survey results that ultimately stripped the family of their productive farmland. They crossed the Ohio River into Indiana in 1816.
5/25. Polly Strong (Corydon, Indiana)
Born a slave in the late 1700s, Polly Strong sued for her freedom in the Indiana courts in 1820, four years after the state’s new constitution banned slavery . According to the historical marker, the Knox County Circuit Court ruled against her, but she won her freedom on appeal at the Supreme Court in Corydon.
5/30. Hannah Toliver (Jefferson, Indiana)
Abraham Lincoln temporarily exempted Kentucky from the Emancipation Proclamation. It seems a shrewd move, ensuring Kentucky’s continued loyalty to the Union and a quicker end to the war, while at the same time, enlisting 1000s of ex-slaves in Confederate states to the cause.
I don’t think “shrewd” is the word Hannah Tolliver would have used. The historical marker on the Jefferson, Indiana side of the river tells us that she got caught trying to help a Kentucky fugitive escape. She was sentenced to 7 years in 1864, and served time in a penitentiary for about 9 months before being pardoned in Jan. 1865. It must have been a bitter pill for her to swallow just as slavery was ending everywhere else.
6/6 Elisha Green (Maysville KY)
I met Elisha Green on a steep downhill ride on a rainy morning. Stained glass honored his memorial stone, looking down on the town of just before the bridge to Ohio. A plaque gave a brief outline of his story. He was a political activist after the war. He believed that land ownership was essential for African Americans’ hope for integration into free society, so he secured funding for land in Paris, Kentucky and helped develop a community there. He was also active in the Republican Party, and he helped establish churches in both Maysville and Paris.
There are two quotations carved into his memorial stone, both of which are obscured by a thin layer of mud:
“I believe that the stain of slavery and its degrading impressions will long linger in the mind of men yet unborn.”
“A people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.”
6/6 John P. Parker Ripley, Ohio
I rode through Maysville, walked the bike over a big bridge across the Ohio River, then rode on for 7 miles or so in the free state of Ohio to the town of Ripley, where two famous conductors of the Underground Railroad lived. I didn’t bike up the steep hill to John Rankin’s house. The hill would have been fine if it had been part of the route, but I was too worn out to take on an optional climb. I did get a chance to visit John Parker’s house down by the river.
Parker’s childhood was rough. Slave owners ripped him from his mother and force-marched him away, chained to an kind old man who died on the journey. He was an angry, destructive boy, but as an adult, he channeled that anger into Underground Railroad work, sneaking across the river into Kentucky and shuttling fugitives across.
The nonprofit John P. Parker Museum has done a heroic job of restoring his house and preserving his story.
I want to thank you all for following me on this trip. I still hope I can complete the ride some day. I hope you’ll look at my recommended reading page to see the books that inspired me to take this journey!