Introduction

The publication of this third edition of the Freedom Chronicle continues the IFS tradition of addressing aspects of freedom that both include and transcend the Underground Railroad. As Jean-Robert Cadet and Judith Sroufe show in their articles, “Unfreedom” is still a powerful legacy of the practice of slavery in the Americas, though more than a hundred years have lapsed since 1888, when Brazil became the final nation to declare it illegal. JoEllen Burkholder reminds us that unless we consciously engage in ongoing self-examination, our best intentions can have the exact opposite effect. Delores Walters’s article explains the lessons she imparts to her students and workshop participants: despite, or perhaps in light of, the contested history of slavery, enslavement must be explored and analyzed from non-racist,
non-sexist perspectives.

Lest we forget, these concerns are not unfounded. According to Free the Slaves, a research and advocacy group, 27 million people are still enslaved in the world today. This figure represents an all time high for enslavement in the world and comes at a time when more resources than ever are being committed to its eradication. Enslavement is–and was–rooted in tradition, custom, and economic greed. It never was, and is not now, a social good or an economic necessity. The articles in this edition call attention to the social attitudes, postures and processes that allow “Unfreedom” to flourish, de facto if not de jure, in societies all over the world.

Prince Brown, Jr.

As with concepts such as justice, democracy, and truth, the meaning and idea of “freedom” can dissipate into a haze of vague, well-meaning generalities and pieties. Seemingly embraced by everyone and denounced by no one, “freedom” can come to seem such an unquestioned good that it is hard to imagine why it needs study or analysis. Its meaning is self-evident, it seems, and the need for its defense is as clear as the means required to defend it.

The four articles featured in this edition of the Freedom Chronicle remind us in different ways that “freedom” is not as transparent as we sometimes think and when we ground our understanding of freedom in the actual, empirical struggles of historical actors working to transform their worlds, we find a complexity that challenges us to confront the ethical, moral, cultural, and political conflicts that invest “freedom” with substantive meaning. The danger of oversimplifying the concept of freedom is especially true with regard to the Underground Railroad and abolitionist movements in the United States as well as other struggles to abolish legalized slavery around the world.

In “A Cycle of Slavery,” Jean-Robert Cadet testifies that slavery is not a historical anomaly safely left behind with the passing of the 19th century. The article is part of Jean-Robert Cadet’s larger project of focusing global attention on the situation of the “restavecs,” enslaved children and young people in contemporary Haiti. For those who wonder how so many Americans in the comfortable classes could have been blind to the atrocities of 19th century slavery, Cadet’s essay serves to ask that very question of us. Not only does he highlight the denial of contemporary Haitian society, but he also indicts the rest of the world for still refusing to place the eradication of slavery among its highest priorities (a point reinforced by Peter Landesman’s New York Times Sunday Magazine article of Sunday, January 25, 2004, “The Girls Next Door,” which details the plight of thousands of children and teenagers imported into the United States to serve as sex slaves).

In “Honoring an American Icon that Invokes Memories of Enslavement,” Judith Sroufe further challenges the idea that the struggle for freedom was resolved with the end of the Civil War. In telling the story of Rosa Washington Riles, a woman from Red Oak, Ohio who, in the mid 20th century, portrayed Aunt Jemima for the Quaker Oats company, Sroufe shows the complex and ambiguous relationship between cultural and political freedom, between changing the laws and changing the ideologies and stereotypes of a nation. In donning the costume of Aunt Jemima, Riles' vocation was to perpetuate the stereotype of the southern Mammy, but with the initiative with which she landed the job as well as in the dignity and humanity she brought to her work as “Aunt Jemima”, Riles challenges the temptation to see her simply as a victim. In the town of Red Oak’s evolving efforts to pay tribute to Riles in ways that acknowledge both Riles' own agency and the legacy of racism that continues to mark her accomplishments, we see a small reflection of the struggles of contemporary US society to confront racism and expand freedom.

Finally, former IFS Faculty Associate and NKU Professor JoEllen Burkholder’s “The Path of War” reminds us of our own historical contingency as our nation is faced with questions of war and peace; conquest and liberation. Burkholder’s essay, updated since she originally presented it as part of an Anti-War Teach-In held on February 27 of 2003 at NKU, confronts us with the moral need to take a stand on the current war in Iraq. Faced with a situation in which both defenders and critics of the US invasion of Iraq invoke the values of freedom and democracy, we are reminded that moments of historical crisis rarely provide easy or clear-cut answers, especially when dissent involves challenging official government policy or volatile public opinion. Burkholder understands the moral necessity of not just analyzing the contemporary situation from a historical perspective but also of committing herself to a position, and in doing so reminds us that advocacy remains an inescapable part of the study of freedom.

John Alberti

In the final of the four feature articles in this issue of the Freedom Chronicle, IFS Executive Committee Member Delores Walters explains how she utilizes her joint position as professor of Anthropology at NKU and community research specialist at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center to develop and inspire Underground Railroad researchers of varying ages and skill levels. While Walters developed her workshops, which introduce community-based researchers to anthropological and historical research methods, in order to uncover individual stories related to the Underground Railroad movement, her signature NKU course is designed to balance the historical record with regard to black women's unique experiences of, and resistance to, enslavement. Walter's article is a sustained meditation on ways in which the struggle to restore to the public memory the unique contributions to the UGRR of African American women and men as well as Native Americans is not only a cultural and political necessity but also a moral and ethical imperative.

Tiffany N. Hinton

 

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