#1607 The Underground Railroad

Listening to America

History, Politics, Unitedstates, Society & Culture, American

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Dr. Cassandra Newby-Alexander of Norfolk State University in Virginia joins Clay Jenkinson to discuss unresolved race issues in the United States. Dr. Newby-Alexander is the author of an important book, Virginia Waterways and the Underground Railroad. During the 18^th and 19^th centuries more than 100,000 enslaved people found their way to freedom in Canada via the Underground Railroad, many of them taking advantage of the myriad of inland waterways in the eastern half of the US. The Underground Railroad was not a single path from southern states to Canada, where slavery was illegal. It was a complex and exceedingly dangerous network of land routes, water passages, safe houses, secret insignia, always just a step or two ahead of the slave catchers and kidnappers who were complicit in the perpetuation of slavery in America.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome to listening to America. I'm Clay Jenkinson.
0:07.0	I'm talking today with Cassandra Newby Alexander of Norfolk State University in Virginia.
0:12.0	It's been a few years, but I spoke... of Norfolk State University in Virginia.
0:13.0	It's been a few years, but I spoke a long time ago at Norfolk State University as Thomas Jefferson.
0:19.0	It was very memorable.
0:21.0	Were you there at that thing? That's long ago now. Yeah I know I'm old. No I'm old but do you remember I was
0:28.8	droning on as Jefferson you know and then a young African American woman I had said per slavery you know my slaves
0:35.9	you know they were dependent on me and I and she said who was dependent on whom and it
0:42.1	brought down the house.
0:43.4	You remember that?
0:45.6	It was one of the greatest moments of my life because what better way to puncture
0:50.6	that people like Jefferson made and I invited her up on stage.
0:55.0	It was one of the great moments. If you ever come across her please tell her she made my day my week my year.
1:01.0	I will I will. She was an honors college student as well. You know we have some
1:08.4	incredible students and we challenged them. I tell them all the time when I'm exposing you to things,
1:16.0	don't just absorb it or hear it and don't ask questions. These are issues that I'm exposing you to so you're just getting almost like a first look but there's so much more and if you don't query the material if you don't dissect it if you just simply accept
1:37.0	arguments as they are you will always be stupid because you will be controlled and
1:42.0	never argue with a racist based on their ideas.
1:47.0	Always dissect whatever it is that's the foundation of their argument and you always shut them up.
1:55.0	Well, she certainly shut me up.
1:57.0	One other time, about 10 years before that I was in Denver or Aurora, Colorado, to a predominantly black student body of about 800.
2:07.0	And I was Jefferson.
	...

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