JSF Bookstore: Displaying items by tag: February

Preserving the legacy of Jesse Stuart and the Appalachian way of life.

When I was compelled to put poems on paper they wrote themselves for they were ripe and ready for harvest ~ Jesse Stuart

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Displaying items by tag: February

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The Underground Railroad

03 February 2012

Published in Jim's Blog

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

Since February is Black History Month, the Jesse Stuart Foundation has prepared a special display of books that relate to the Underground Railroad.

Before the Civil War, the Underground Railroad was a network of hundreds of safe houses throughout the North and South that served as hiding places on the road to freedom for tens of thousands of runaway slaves who risked their lives in a long, hazardous journey, often on foot, that frequently stretched more than one thousand miles. It is the tale, too, of perseverance, bravery, and humanity in which thousands of whites risked social scorn, business setbacks, arrests, fines, prison, and even death to lend the fugitives a helping hand.

Because of its dangerous and highly secretive nature, there were no records of the "conductors" on the Underground Railroad nor was there a list of the "depots." No one really knew (or knows) how extensive it was. The Underground Railroad became legendary when the war ended and newspapers and magazines reported its success in glowing detail. Some claimed that over one million slaves escaped to freedom on the Underground Railroad, but today scholars think the actual numbers range between 40,000 and 100,000.

Runaways risked everything. Mothers urged their sons to flee, never to see them again. Parents sent their children off with friends, knowing it was the last time they would embrace. Sometimes entire families traveled North together.

Runaways lived in fear. They traveled mainly at night, stumbling through rock-filled creeks, trying to navigate their way through meadows, thickets, and forests, hiding every time they heard the sound of horses, hooves or carriage wheels on darkened roads. They slept little as they moved from home to home, barn to barn, church to church.

The northerners who assisted them devised inventive hideaways for the fugitives. One abolitionist, whose home was built near the Ohio River, dug an underground tunnel from the basement of his house to the riverbank so that slaves could flee unobserved if slavecatchers arrived. Many homes in Kentucky and Ohio contained secret rooms to hide escaped slaves.

The Underground Railroad eventually had over five hundred safe houses. For many years, the story of the Underground Railroad gradually faded from public memory, but during the last few years historical, and civic organizations have given it new life.

Today, many of the original sites have been restored and are open to individuals and tour groups, as a new generation of people are heartened by the triumphant story of blacks and whites who worked together for freedom so long ago.

Some of the Underground Railroad sites are within easy driving distance of the Ashland area, including the National Underground Railroad Museum in Maysville and several homes in Southern Ohio. For more information, our bookstore contains a visitor=s guide to more than 300 sites.

If you're interested in reading more about this fascinating part of our national and regional experience, the Jesse Stuart Foundation Bookstore, located at 1645 Winchester Avenue in downtown Ashland, has a number of books for adults and children that focus on the Underground Railroad.

For more information, visit our Web site JSFBOOKS.COM or call (606) 326-1667.

February is Heart Month

24 January 2012

Published in Jim's Blog

If you have a friend or loved one recovering from illness or surgery, Jesse Stuart's The Year of My Rebirth would be a perfect heart-month gift.

In 1991, we republished a new oversized edition which remains in print today. It was especially fitting that this edition was sponsored by one of Kentucky's finest cardiologists, Dr. Charles Rhodes.

Stuart's message in this well-known book is that no person can really begin living until he has come close to dying. As a young man, Stuart lived at top speed. Then, in 1954, at age 48, rushing from a lecture in Murray, Ky. to catch a chartered plane to make another talk in Illinois, he was struck down by a severe heart attack, and he almost died.

The Year of My Rebirth is the record of the year that followed. From a big, aggressive man who loved hard work and physical activity, Stuart was reduced to an invalid who could not tie his shoes. Carried back to the Kentucky hill country where he was born, he became a prisoner in his house. A "No Visitors" sign in the driveway repelled friends and family, so Stuart turned to new friends: the three-legged possum who lived beneath the kitchen, the peewees nesting by the kitchen door, the baby-handed mole tunneling under the yard. His journal of recovery is alive with the awareness of a man who found time not only to live life but to examine it.

Physically, Stuart was like a child. He had to learn again to stand alone and then to walk and, finally, to use his arms and hands and even to put food in his mouth. Mounting a short flight of steps was exhausting. He subscribed to a new set of values in which the blades of grass and daisies in a pasture had more intrinsic worth than the expensive cattle that fed on them, and nature's annual resurrection in spring seemed proof of the presence of God and the promise of heaven.

For other heart attack survivors, Stuart has some cautionary words: Much more than the heart can be affected. His vision dropped abruptly from 20-20 to the point where he was unable to read newspaper headlines without the help of glasses. And the months immediately following an attack bring with them bouts of deep depression.

In compensation, as Jesse Stuart slowly recovered strength, he felt reborn and cast in a different mold, more tolerant, more gentle, more reflective than before. Says Stuart: "My world had been a thousand friends in a hundred cities, ten cups of coffee and loud talk until three in the morning. Now my world was reduced to my home, my farm, and my hills. I lived more closely with my wife, my daughter, and my animal friends. I thought more deeply of my God."

And implicit throughout the book is Stuart's strongly held feeling that his close brush with death was a valuable learning experience.

In his later year, Jesse Stuart and several members of his family became active spokesmen for the American Heart Association. Out of respect for Stuart's work, the Kentucky Affiliate of the American Heart Association endorsed our 1991 reprint of The Year of My Rebirth.

In the fall of 1963, working with the American Heart Association, Stuart also made a promotional film, Heart of A Town, narrated by Edward G. Robinson. It is available for viewing at the Jesse Stuart Foundation Bookstore, 1645 Winchester Ave. in downtown Ashland.

The Year of My Rebirth is available in the Jesse Stuart Foundation Bookstore at 1645 Winchester Avenue in downtown Ashland, or you can purchase it by clicking on this link.

For more information, call (606) 326-1667.

James M. Gifford, Ph.D.

CEO & Senior Editor