Introduction

This edition of the Freedom Chronicle illustrates a core purpose for the creation and development of the Institute for Freedom Studies. The Institute uses the Underground Railroad movement as a model for teaching tolerance, inclusiveness and democracy by acknowledging and embracing the historical and present-day reality of the multicultural heritage of American society. Daryl Harris’ piece, from a dissertation in progress, builds on a neglected aspect of the African and African American strategy of resisting enslavement by running away and joining groups of indigenous peoples. In their efforts to survive European subjugation, these groups sometimes struggled together and, at other times, in opposition. In most cases, what resulted were intimate relationships leading to a shared cultural and biological heritage, a heritage which is often ignored in popular public accounts of the UGRR movement and its significance in American history and culture. Only recently is this shared heritage being acknowledged.

Sharlotte Neely’s essay, for example, is a logical extension of Harris’ work. It picks up the story at a point in which both African and Native Americans have been forcibly and legally fitted into a European-dominated social system of ethnic/racial, economic, educational and political inequality. Neely, by implication, raises a most important question: can the fact of cultural and biological integration overcome the effects of a culturally-entrenched ideology of white supremacy? Both Black Nationalist and Native American exclusion policies have been embraced by different factions as Africa’s descendants and Native Americans each struggle to forge a path to the American economic and political mainstream in which their cultural integrity remains intact.

A short piece by Delores Walters moves the UGRR story from research and theory to the arenas of teaching, public education and other necessary applications. Last year, IFS partnered with the Cincinnati Opera to produce its first and only commissioned opera based on the life of Margaret Garner. Margaret Garner was a runaway who, in 1856, killed her two-year old daughter to prevent her being returned to a state of enslavement. Garner’s ensuing trial in Cincinnati was about her status as property, rather than as an accused murderer of another human being. As such, the trial drew regional, national and international attention and remains one of the defining events in American history. Margaret Garner, as well as the educational events that preceded and accompanied the opera’s production, served to promote a series of needed public dialogues. At their core, these dialogues revolved around those issues which remain the legacy of American slavery, such as racial and sexual subjugation, inequality, under-education and poverty.

Finally, we are happy to include in this edition the winners of the Sixth Annual IFS Student Art and Writing Contests. In April 2006, an award ceremony was held at Corbett Theatre, where the winners’ works were exhibited, and each of the award-winning NKU students was presented with cash prizes.

Prince Brown, Jr., Ph.D., Director
Tiffany N. Hinton, Ph.D., Edition Editor

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