TeacherAide
A weekly
teaching aide for student developers
Case For
Freedom
SESSION 9
HANDS
ON
Messy Activity: To get your students to truly understand captivity you can
handicap your students so that they cannot use their hands. You are going to
cover them with mud. This is very messy so you may want to use a tarp. Have a
bucket filled with a two part dirt and one part water. Have all the students get
into a line and explain that this mud represents the captivity of the law and
sin. Explain that the mud on your hands is not the best situation, but it does
keep you from doing some things. But the fact still remains that you have mud on
your hands. Have the students sit with the mud on their hands as you read the
convergence. Once you have discussed the convergence explain that Christ has set
us free from the law and sin. Have the students wash their hands in a bucket
filled with clean water. You may also want to have some towels for the students.
A less messy alternative is to use toy hand cuffs or zip ties. Tie the
students hands to the chair or together. Use the same teaching points as above.
ILLUSTRATING THE POINT
This is an incredibly story of a runaway slave who killed her child instead of
it returning as a slave. This true story makes us think of the sacrifice that
God made with His own son to save us from our enslavers,
Source: Levi Coffin, Reminiscences (Cincinnati, 1876).
Margaret Garner, a fugitive slave from Kentucky, killed one of her children
rather than permit her to be returned to slavery. She drowned in a
shipwreck as she was being brought back to slavery. Toni Morrison's masterpiece
of a novel Beloved is based upon this narrative.
Perhaps no case that came under my notice, while engaged in aiding fugitive
slaves, attracted more attention and aroused deeper interest and sympathy than
the case of Margaret Garner, the slave mother who killed her child rather than
see it taken back to slavery. This happened in the latter part of January, 1856.
The Ohio River was frozen over at the time, and the opportunity thus offered for
escaping to a free State was embraced by a number of slaves living in Kentucky,
several miles back from the river. A party of seventeen, belonging to different
masters in the same neighborhood, made arrangements to escape together. There
was snow on the ground and the roads were smooth, so the plan of going to the
river on a sled naturally suggested itself. The time fixed for their flight was
Sabbath night, and having managed to get a large sled and two good horses,
belonging to one of their masters, the party of seventeen crowded into the sled
and started on their hazardous journey in the latter part of the night. They
drove the horses at full speed, and at daylight reached the River below
Covington, opposite Wester Row. They left the sled and horses here, and as
quickly as possible crossed the river on foot. It was now broad daylight, and
people were beginning to pass about the streets and the fugitives divided their
company that they might not attract so much notice.
An old slave named Simon and his wife Mary, together with their son Robert and
his wife Margaret Garner and four children, made their way to the house of a
colored man named Kite, who had formerly lived in their neighborhood and had
been purchased from slavery by his father, Joe Kite. They had to make several
inquiries in order to find Kite's house, which was below Mill Creek, in the
lower part of the city. This afterward led to their discovery; they had been
seen by a number of persons on their way to Kite's, and were easily traced by
pursuers. The other nine fugitives were more fortunate. They made their way up
town and found friends who conducted them to safe hiding- places, where they
remained until night. They were put on the Underground Railroad, and went safely
through to Canada....
In a few minutes...[Kite's] house was surrounded by pursuers- - the masters of
the fugitives, with officers and a posse of men. The door and windows were
barred, and those inside refused to give admittance. The fugitives were
determined to fight, and to die, rather than to be taken back to slavery.
Margaret, the mother of the four children, declared that she would kill herself
and her children before she would return to bondage. The slave men were armed
and fought bravely. The window was first battered down with a stick of wood, and
one of the deputy marshals attempted to enter, but a pistol shot from within
made a flesh wound on his arm and caused him to abandon the attempt. The
pursuers then battered down the door with some timber and rushed in. The husband
of Margaret fired several shots, and wounded one of the officers, but was soon
overpowered and dragged out of the house. At this moment, Margaret Garner,
seeing that their hopes of freedom were in vain, seized a butcher knife that lay
on the table, and with one stroke cut the throat of her little daughter, whom
she probably loved the best. She then attempted to take the life of the other
children and to kill herself, but she was overpowered and hampered before she
could complete her desperate work. The whole party was then arrested and lodged
in jail.
The trial lasted two weeks, drawing crowds to the courtroom every day....The
counsel for the defense brought witnesses to prove that the fugitives had been
permitted to visit the city at various times previously. It was claimed that
Margaret Garner had been brought here by her owners a number of years before, to
act as nurse girl, and according to the law which liberated slaves who were
brought into free States by the consent of their masters, she had been free from
that time, and her children, all of whom had been born since then- - following
the condition of the mother- - were likewise free.
The Commissioner decided that a voluntary return to slavery, after a visit to a
free State, re- attached the conditions of slavery, and that the fugitives were
legally slaves at the time of their escape....
But in spite of touching appeals, of eloquent pleadings, the Commissioner
remanded the fugitives back to slavery. He said that it was not a question of
feeling to be decided by the chance current of his sympathies; the law of
Kentucky and the United States made it a question of property.
I THOUGHT I HEARD YOU SAY
I know what liberty is because I know what slavery was.
Elizabeth Keckley
I'm against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.
Henry Louis Mencken
A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually and spiritually. One
must fight for a life of action, not reaction.
Rita Mae Brown
Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.
Andy Warhol
I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau