Undergrads and the Underground Railroad: Student Project Aids Freedom Center From: University of Cincinnati Currents Date: March 3, 2000 Story and photos by: Marianne Kunnen-Jones Phone: (513) 556-1826 Archive: Campus News, General News Twenty-three UC undergraduate history majors are digging through 19th-century court records, memoirs, slave narratives, newspapers, archives and letters to find out more about a part of American history that was kept as secret as possible: the Underground Railroad. By the time the students conclude their research at the end of this quarter, they know their work will not be kept quiet or relegated to a dusty old file drawer. The papers resulting from their labors will be turned over to the proposed National Underground Railroad and Freedom Center, to be based in Cincinnati. "My hope is that there will be a long-term connection between students and scholars at both UC and Xavier University and the Freedom Center," said Geoffrey Plank, assistant professor of history who conceived and is teaching the course, The Underground Railroad in Ohio. "My thinking was to lay the groundwork for more formal arrangements." Plank's students are investigating 23 individual topics including: Why did escaping slaves choose certain paths over others? How did whites in the Underground Railroad gain the escaping slaves' trust? What was the role of nonslavehold-ing southern whites in assisting fugitive slaves? What happened to free blacks if they assisted escapees and were caught? To help find answers to their questions students are visiting archives at the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus, the Cincinnati Museum Center, the Batavia (Ohio) Public Library, the New Richmond (Ohio) Library, the Ripley Public Library and UC. "You can't just grab a roll of microfilm and start going," explained student Brian Morgan, of his research on punishments faced by whites who worked in the Underground Railroad. "The topic is so undiscovered, you have to dig through a lot." In addition to researching documents, the students sought a greater understanding of the real people and houses that were part of this embattled period in American history, by traveling with their teacher to Ripley, Ohio, on Feb. 26. There, they visited two Underground Railroad houses: the Parker House, which was operated by freed black and foundry owner John Parker and is being restored along the Ohio River, and the Rankin House, which was owned by Rev. John Rankin and required runaways to climb 100 stone steps to a hilltop home overlooking the river. At the Rankin House, fugitives could find a few days' refuge by hiding under stairways, under a false floor in a barn or under a back porch. On their Ripley visit, students learned that before dams were constructed, the Ohio River sometimes got as low as 1.9 feet. Crossing it would not be as treacherous in the mid-19th century as it is today. That information didn't surprise Kelly Beckett, a senior who is investigating whether the Ohio River was more of a barrier or a highway to the Underground Railroad. After the class concludes in March, one student, Vicki Arnold, is arranging to do further research as a volunteer with the National Underground Railroad and Freedom Center.