It's dark. It's cold. It's rainy.
The terrain is unfamiliar, gunshots ring through the night, and menacing figures unleash a fusillade of demands and insults at me as I kneel in the mud.
It's 1836. I'm a runaway slave, and I'm following the North Star in hopes of finding my freedom.
Public history institutions and publications downplayed or simply ignored the subject of slavery for many years, but Conner Prairie, an interactive history park near Indianapolis, stages its innovative and immersive Follow the North Star program each November and April to give participants a more personal look at the issue and the questions it still raises today.
Historians at Conner Prairie warn visitors up front that their acclaimed Follow the North Star program is not for everyone.
We became part of the Follow the North Star experience last November on a cold night after a rainy day that left the trail in Conner Prairie's wooded area wet and muddy.
Our group filed into an auditorium, and a member of Conner Prairie's staff gave us a quick preview of what to expect.
One woman nervously asked if she could just "observe" the program after a warning that we might experience people shouting at us and demanding that we follow orders. The staff member told "The Observer" that we needed to follow instructions as a group throughout the experience, but we could opt out of the direct verbal confrontations. The staffer passed out white strips of cloth, telling us that if we felt the experience got too intense, we could use the cloth as a headband so the re-enactors would refrain from addressing us directly.
The mood grew somber as we silently boarded a trolley to take us to the outdoor area where we would experience the program.
We arrived at our destination and walked a short distance into the woods.
Suddenly, it was 1836 and it was on.
Our "master" immediately separated the group into "bucks" and "breeders" (men and women), shouting demands and insults the whole time.
We were lazy, dirty, thieving, and stupid. We were his property. We were not to, under any circumstance, impair his ability to get top dollar for us by being insolent or uncooperative.
We could not look a white person directly in the eye. We were not to speak unless spoken to. We were to do as we were told, and to be quick about it.
It mattered little if you didn't answer quickly enough, didn't give the answers the questioners wanted to hear, or didn't answer at all. The result was the same: more verbal abuse.
I felt an initial shock as I heard the volley of rapid-fire insults and demands. I reminded myself that the re-enactors could not touch, physically harm or kill me, but it was still difficult to escape the desire to cry or flee.
I saw that "The Observer" and the three young women accompanying her wasted no time in donning their white headbands. I quickly sidled away from them and tried to keep my distance from them for the rest of the trip lest I become the sole target of insults at any given time.
The slavers put us to work moving pieces of wood from one pile to another as they insulted us, threatened us and loudly discussed what they might do to us.
Suddenly, the slavers left us alone and someone frantically whispered, "Let's go!"
The group quickly moved through the night and encountered people who either helped or hindered our journey to our hoped-for freedom.
Our most unpleasant stop occurred as a couple of slave catchers found us along the road. They berated and threatened us, blaming us for causing them to lose their jobs. This resonated with me as I thought about the fact that you hear many of the same sorts of arguments as an excuse for discrimination against particular groups even today.
The slave catchers then told us to stay put as they threatened to find a rope and hang us with it.
We again slipped away into the night and the deep woods.
We encountered a woman who had gained her freedom and she invited us to share the warmth of her bonfire in the woods.
Most of the group accepted the woman's story as true, but by now, I was feeling a deep paranoia and didn't quite trust the woman in the woods.
We followed the woman's instructions as we visited the home of a Quaker family. I still felt distrustful and uncomfortable as the Quakers offered us a bit of food and shelter as they directed us to our next stop. I didn't want to take the food and wanted to quickly be on my way.
Our journey came to an end as we encountered a fortune teller who told some of us our fate.
Tim learned that he escaped his owners, who recaptured and branded him before he finally escaped for good on his second flight to freedom.
To my great joy, I learned that I made it to freedom in Cass County, Michigan, where I lived the rest of my life.
We met with a staff member back at Conner Prairie's main building for a debriefing session.
During the session, I learned that my distrust in the woman in the woods wasn't necessarily simply paranoia as some African Americans, for the sake of their own survival, lured runaways into trusting them before turning them in to slave catchers.
The whole 90-minute experience left me emotionally and physically spent. It is especially sobering to realize that fugitive slaves spent months, or even years, on the run and that there were no guarantees that the journey would not end in death...or worse.
Conner Prairie began offering Follow the North Star in the late 1990s, drawing some 60,000 participants in the program over the years. It represents some of the shift in dealing with the subject of slavery in public history in recent years, but it's still a relatively rare way of addressing the subject in public history institutions.
Conner Prairie's Follow the North Star program runs on select weekends each April and November. Reservations are required and participants must be 12 or older. The program is definitely not appropriate for younger children, and I would suggest that participants be prepared to fully participate in order to get the most benefit from the experience. Admission is $20.
The Discomfort Zone: Reenacting Slavery at Conner Prairie from the Organization of American Historians' OAH Magazine of History has a short history of the Follow the North Star program, examples of other efforts to deal with emotionally-charged topics at public institutions, and discussion of the pros and cons of such approaches.
Check out Fleeing for Freedom: Stories of the Underground Railroad as Told by Levi Coffin and William Still, edited by Willene Hendrick and George Hendrick. Levi Coffin, who we encountered as part of the Quaker family that helped us during our Follow the North Star experience, was extremely important in the Underground Railroad network in Indiana and Ohio. We also heard the story of his Underground Railroad activity in Cincinnati when we visited the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center a few years ago.
Thanks to the Hamilton County Convention and Visitors Bureau for sponsoring my visit to Hamilton County, providing lodging, meals and a tour of Hamilton County attractions for my review during my recent visit there, with no further compensation. I was free to express my own opinions about the stay and experiences, and the opinions expressed here are mine.
© Dominique King 2013 All rights reserved
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