4 1 The older slaves told me I am 17 They say my mother’s mother came on a ship from Africa I thought I’d live my whole life on the Kentucky farm where I grew up My life as a slave was hard We worked six days a week from sunup to sundown We slept in leaky shacks and were given just the bare essentials to live But my life was not as hard as I knew it was for slaves in the Josiah Braxton Runaway Slave
5 Deep South There they live in even poorer conditions and faced more beatings than we did on the farm My master died one full moon ago and all of his property was transferred into his widow’s hands She and her son began selling field hands To them we were their legal property We had no rights I saw a husband sold from his wife I saw three young men like me taken in chains headed for a cotton plantation in Alabama I made a promise to myself that I would not be sold off like a horse I refused to go to the Deep South farther from freedom and deeper into the places where slavery is the most cruel My chance to keep that promise came sooner than I expected While working in the fields I heard another slave Dotty sing The birds rivers and stars in her songs are the coded language of the Underground Railroad Dotty helps slaves escape from this farm and from other farms too That
6 Traveling the Underground Railroad was dangerous for runaway slaves makes her a conductor When she turns the farm into an Underground Railroad depot she is a station master She feeds fugitives who hide in the forest far behind the farm’s cabins I vowed that I would go to freedom too but I knew it would be hard An older field hand told me I would have to walk hundreds of miles to the Ohio
River and cross it in order to get into Ohio a free state The slave catchers had dogs that might be sniffing my trail trying to find me If they caught me the slave catchers would make my life a nightmare It couldn’t be any worse than going to the Deep South I thought The night I was ready to go I slept a few hours and awoke when Dotty shook me She gave me stale bread and told me to sneak through the woods She instructed me to hide during the day walk at night and always keep the North Star in front of me After four nights I should look for a white house with a green roof and five front steps The couple who live there would help me With those instructions I slipped into the night The moment my foot touched the ground I was on the Underground Railroad My passage has been lonely I am hungry cold and afraid To ease my mind I go over what I know about the Underground Railroad Conductors are 7
