EXCHANGE: Exhibit comes to grips with slavery in Illinois

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) - Deep in the heart of the Shawnee National Forest a couple of summers ago, Tim Townsend said he saw the light go on for about two dozen high school students from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Illinois.

They were at the remains of what was once Miller Grove, a community of free African-Americans who had made their way up to southern Illinois from Tennessee in the 1840s.

Here, the Miller family purchased property and farmed land with other families that would eventually join them. They had to provide documents proving they had been freed, an important distinction because the settlement was near the Ohio River, a demarcation between free and slave states.

If little now exists of Miller Grove, the students, said Townsend, understood its importance.

"We had to hike in a little bit," Townsend recalled, "and I didn't know if they would be too busy swatting bugs or complaining about the heat to really comprehend the story, but I was totally wrong.

"They were riveted by what they were being told at Miller Grove."

The students took two three-day trips as part of the Illinois Freedom Project confronting the role of slavery in the state and the fallout from it in places from the Nicholas Jarrot House State Historic Site in Cahokia to the Underground Railroad Freedom Station at Knox College in Galesburg to the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum in Chicago.

Now an exhibit on race and slavery in Illinois history is on display at the Old State Capitol's State Library.

Townsend, a historian at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site and coordinator of the Illinois Freedom Project, said the exhibit is a smaller part of a larger undertaking. Townsend's hope is that adult mentors can come forward to replicate what happened two summers ago for those Springfield students.

"We've worked with youth in an intentional way to tell inspiring stories of freedom from one end of the state to the other," Townsend said. "It's an effort that's involved meeting with youth, conversations about what history means to them and can mean to them and looking at the larger stories of history in a way that is tough.

"There are some tough stories here."

Tiffany Mathis, director of resource development and community relations for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Illinois, was part of those student trips.

Mathis said it was paramount for the club to be part of that pilot program.

"The students got a realistic view of history that they don't get in school, the nitty gritty of it," Mathis said. "It was a real in-depth, deep dive."

Mathis also remembered students' eyes lighting up at stories at Miller Grove or hearing about slaves who were worked so hard that muscle was tearing off their bones.

"The reactions throughout visiting the sites and the conversations we had were like, 'Oh my gosh. I could not have done that, or how did people even exist after that? Or how do you live through that experience.'

"The importance of allies was another thing that I think was an interesting lesson for them. Sometimes we focus on black issues and we think that only black people can solve black issues, that black issues only matter to black people, and that's not true.

"Throughout slavery and throughout the abolition of slavery, you had white counterparts who felt just as passionately about pursuing freedom and seeing a group of people free and having rights. On some of these trips, we would have white tour guides who were very passionate about conveying the history and being very honest."

Michael Phelon said one of the keys was demonstrating to kids how to use the past as a stepping stone.

"How can we connect our past to our future, with all its ugliness and hate to overcome everything? We also took the students around to the 1908 Race Riot markers and exposed them to ugly history of Springfield, which is just coming to light," said Phelon, the founder of The Outlet, which helps out young fatherless youths.

"Some of the kids were, like, 'Wow, I didn't know NAACP started here.' This city was turned upside down."

The exhibit, on display through Aug. 31, details how slavery was introduced into the Illinois Country in the early 1700s, Townsend noted. Slaves then were governed by the Code Noir, or Black Code, a 17th century French law that defined slaves as personal property that could be bought and sold "just like any other possession."

Slave labor was used, Townsend added, from southern Illinois salt works to northern Illinois lead mines "and everywhere in between."

Despite the efforts of anti-slavery Illinois Gov. Edward Coles, two girls were sold off as slaves by the Sangamon County sheriff in 1827 to satisfy the debts of their owner, Thomas Cox. A Springfield resident recalled that the sale created "talk and sympathy, not for the two girls, but for Mrs. Cox and her two children."

The exhibit also highlights John Hart Crenshaw, who ran a "reverse underground railroad" in southern Illinois, and Illinois College's Beecher Hall, a center of the abolitionist movement.

Larry Hemingway of the Springfield Urban League said the trips were "game changers" for youths.

"We challenged them," Hemingway said, "about using their voice as a powerful, positive tool to make positive change in schools and communities."

The lesson for students, Mathis said is to persist, much like the founders of Miller Grove.

"It's learning about people who championed and got through and endured that. That gave a broader view of why it's important (for students) to be successful, why it's important to uplift their community, why it's important to be a role model for younger kids coming under them. We all influence each other and lift each other up."

The 2017 Illinois Freedom Journeys were funded by the National Park Service and had in-kind support from a number of Springfield partners. Townsend said he doesn't envision that level of funding, but he's hoping to identify people who are willing to work with youths to attend instructional workshops this summer.

He's also hoping to empower youth mentors to take students on such history journeys themselves.

As for the exhibit, Townsend knows it will make some viewers uncomfortable.

"Our hope is that people will come away with a better understanding of the complexity and injustice that could be found in Lincoln's Illinois," Townsend said, "and that they develop a better appreciation of the challenges that so many African Americans faced in Illinois.

"Ultimately we hope that that everyone, especially young people, come away feeling inspired that stories of victory can come from challenging, and even sometimes, tragic situations."

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Source: The (Springfield) State Journal-Register, https://bit.ly/2E5Qzdz

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Information from: The State Journal-Register, http://www.sj-r.com