Riding on freedom road

Author tells tales of Underground Railroad on parallel bike trails

By CLARA NIEL CNIEL@NEWSPOST.COM

In Natchez, Mississippi, there is a trail that cuts through forests and fields, providing a scenic view for the people who walk along it. However, when David Goodrich saw it, he saw it as history engraved in the land.

If You Go

■ Author David Goodrich talks about his book “On Freedom Road” at 1:30 p.m. June 13 at the Frederick 50+ Center, 1440 Taney Ave., Frederick. Free.

■ Over the course of four years, David Goodrich rode his bicycle 3,000 miles, traveling the routes of the Underground Railroad. He followed conductor Harriet Tubman from where she was enslaved in Maryland all the way to sanctuary in Canada. He followed the route from New Orleans through Mississippi and points north. Join Goodrich and engage with history through his unique journey.

■ Copies of his book will be available for signing. I do have a “senior” coming to do an author talk in June.

“It took me a while to realize that that cut through the forest was mostly made by chained feet,” he said. “This was like the main drag of the slaves … from the upper South to the slave markets in Natchez and New Orleans,” he said.

An avid cyclist based in Rockville, Goodrich rode on three routes of the Underground Railroad, over 3,000 miles, and wrote about his experience and the Railroad’s history in his new book, “On Freedom Road.”

He followed Harriet Tubman’s route from Maryland’s Eastern Shore to Ontario, Canada. He pedaled his way from New Orleans, Louisiana, through Mississippi and the Delta Blues. Finally, he followed the Ohio River, stopping by places that are important in the history of the Underground Railroad.

Goodrich said he had to approach this journey with humility. One of his ancestors was a ship captain on the Middle Passage and carried slaves from Africa to Jamaica. A museum in Bristol, England, has all the records of the people taken and shipped to slavery, he said.

“You might think, ‘Oh, I, my ancestors must have been heroically helping people along the Underground Railroad,’ when that isn’t necessarily the way it works,” he said.

And with each ride, and each story he learned, he found himself humbled and in awe of the history and resilience of people who risked their lives traveling on the Underground Railroad.

On his route along the Ohio River, which was a hub of trade during the the time of slavery, the stories of the people who would cross from slave state Kentucky into other states with safe houses stuck out to him.

Flatlands line the Ohio River, leaving people few hiding spots from the slave gangs that would be hunting for them, even under the cover of darkness. In Ripley, Ohio, a Black man named John Parker would make rescue trips into Kentucky to bring the slaves to safety, Goodrich said.

The Ohio River was a place of commerce by day but shifted to tragedy, life and death by night, Goodrich said.

“There were cases [Parker] would describe where he had a boat that just did not have enough room in it for everyone who was there on shore, and he had to leave two people,” Goodrich said. “And then as he was midway through the river, this is in the dark of night, he sees torches, from either side, kind of converging on the people who were left the slave hunting gangs,” he said.

He also remembers being in lower Manhattan during his Harriet Tubman route, and saw an eyebrow threading salon in the place where the Anti Slavery Society once stood.

It was there that Harriet Tubman tried to get money to go back to Maryland and free her mother and father from slavery. When the Society said they didn’t have any money to give her, she sat in front of the building, fell asleep, and by morning she had a can full of money that she could use. There were also remnants from other Black historical figures.

“You can still see the the streets that Frederick Douglass came up when he was when he made his break for freedom,” Goodrich said.

Goodrich said that during his trips, he was aware that he would be riding his shiny bike, always with the security of knowing where he was going and where he would be staying that night.

He may be out biking in the elements, but it wasn’t in the dark, on foot, with people hunting him and hopefully they had a guide who was half as good as Harriet Tubman, he said.

To travel in this way, takes an immeasurable amount of strength, he said.

“We talked about how history is written by survivors,” he said. “There were so many who did not survive, who recaptured and sold South very quickly to the slave markets in Natchez and in New Orleans.”