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By Dave Zuchowski Contact CNHI News Editor J.B.
Search Bittner at
CNHI News Service
jbbittner@cnhi.com.
CINCINNATI -- The National
News Service Blogs
Underground Railroad Freedom Center
JB Bittner
sits, appropriately enough, in
Tom Lindley Cincinnati on the banks of the Ohio
William Ketter River.
David Joyner That waterway is the boundary that
once separated the slave-holding
Recent blog posts states from the free Northern states
in the era before the Civil War.
■ Open government
All in all, it is estimated that close to
advocate delivers
100,000 slaves made their way to
powerful message
freedom in the North, Mexico and
■ How do you get people Canada in the antebellum period,
to read stories that with thousands of them crossing the
matter? Ohio into freedom at Cincinnati. The
■ Warm up to center’s location recognizes the city’s
videography role in the history of the Underground
■ Links to tools to use the Railroad.
Web Built between Cincinnati’s baseball
and football stadiums amid an

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Underground Railroad Center promotes freedom | CNHI News Service
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2009 Winners
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Page 2 of 4
unfinished riverfront development,
the center got its start June 17, 2002,
with a groundbreaking ceremony that
included then-first lady Laura Bush,
Oprah Winfrey and Muhammad Ali in
attendance. After a $110 million
investment, the center opened Aug.
3, 2004.
The museum is made up of three
connected pavilions that represent
the center’s core values of courage,
cooperation and perseverance. The
roof terrace of the central Grand Hall
holds an eternal flame, symbolic of
the candles placed in the windows of
safe houses, which were sites along
the routes to freedom where slaves
could find shelter. Similarly, the
central pavilion’s south-facing,
undulating stone walls can be seen as
welcoming arms furthering the notion
of a safe house.
One of the most colorful artifacts in
the museum is the Raggannon
tapestry on the second floor. Covering
almost an entire wall, the two large
panels tell stories of freedom’s heroes
from the 1800s through contemporary
times.
Another eye-catching exhibit, the
slave pen, is a two-story log structure
moved to the center from Maysville,
Ky. Near the entrance, a copy of a
hand-written inventory of slave pen
owner John Anderson lists the names
of enslaved people he owned at the
time of his death.
One interesting bit of museum signage
reports that, on the eve of the Civil
War, slaves accounted for one half-
billion dollars in property and worked
to produce 4.8 million bales of cotton.
The museum also claims that between
11 and 15 million Africans were
transported across the Atlantic to
North and South America during the
slave-trading era. A nearby timeline
traces the chronology of their
American experiences, starting at
1619, when the first boatload arrived
in Virginia, to 1865 when the 13th
Amendment abolished slavery in the
5/20/2010
Underground Railroad Center promotes freedom | CNHI News Service Page 3 of 4

2009 Winners Announced United States.

2008 Winners Many of the displays in the center are
interactive, such as one-touch screen
2008 Press Release programs that let the viewer assume
2007 Winners the role of a slave and make decisions
2007 Press Release (PDF)
about the route and problems
encountered on the way to freedom.
2006 Winners (PDF) The center has several theaters that
tell the story of the Underground
Railroad.
A major third floor exhibit, “From
Freedom to Slavery,” outlines three
centuries of slavery, telling the story
of who the slaves were, why they
were brought to the Americas, how
they lived and worked, who their
allies were and how they ultimately
won their freedom.
Going beyond the Underground
Railroad, the center’s freedom
advocacy mission extends globally and
to contemporary times. For example,
one current exhibit, up through May
31, is titled “Without Sanctuary:
Lynching Photography in America.”
Brutal in its imagery, the collection of
photographs and post cards shows
some of the thousands of people,
mostly African-Americans, hanged by
mobs between 1882 and 1968 in
places extending from Sherman,
Texas, to Duluth, Minn.
Later this year, a section of the Berlin
Wall is slated to be installed outside
the center. The 12-by-4-foot wall
segment was presented as a gift by
the city of Berlin.
IF YOU’RE GOING ...
Underground Railroad Center
•For directions, admission prices and
hours of operation for the National
Underground Railroad Freedom
Center, call (513) 333-7500 or visit
www.freedomcenter.org.
•For more information on Cincinnati
attractions, call (859) 581-2260 or
visit www.cincinnatiusa.com.
•Now celebrating its 50th anniversary,
the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park is
perched in Eden Park overlooking the
downtown area. The winner of the
Tony Award in 2004 for Best Regional

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Underground Railroad Center promotes freedom | CNHI News Service Page 4 of 4

Theater, the Playhouse comprises two

theaters and has a 10-month season.
The playhouse also has a reputation
for staging both national and world
premieres such as Tennessee Williams'
“The Notebook of Trigorin” and
Pulitzer-Prize nominated “Coyote on a
Fence,” respectively. Call (513) 421-
3888 or visit www.cincyplay.com.
Dave Zuchowski writes for the New
Castle (Pa.) News. CNHI News Service
distributes his column.
xxxx
CAPTION: The National Underground
Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati
recognizes the city’s role in helped
escaped slaves find their way to
freedom.

By Tom Lindley at May 4 2010 -

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