SLAVERY UNDER GLASS

摘要

Although most visitors to the new Underground Railroad Free-dom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, will approach it from the side fac-ing downtown, that's actually the rear of the building. The glass-walled main entry is on the other side, facing south across the banks of the Ohio River. The center turns its face in that direction for good reason. The river is at the heart of the story it will tell. In the mid-19th century, those waters were a fateful dividing line. Separating free-soil Ohio from slave-owning Kentucky, they were a desperate crossing point for runaway slaves. The river's north banks were the site of persistent low-intensity warfare between abolitionists and armed slave owners, who were permitted by law to pursue their human "property" into free states. In that era of escalating confrontation, Cincinnati and nearby towns became important way stations in the. Underground Railroad, the informal network of safe houses, sympathetic whites and free blacks who helped conduct escaped slaves to safety.