JSF Bookstore: Displaying items by tag: Ohio River

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

I want to walk around and look at these old immortal hills before I go, for here I was born and have lived all my days. ~ Jesse Stuart

No Items In Your Cart

Displaying items by tag: Ohio River

Subscribe to this RSS feed

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.

Billy C. Clark

10 December 2002

Published in Featured Author's and Books

"In nineteen years of growing up here in the valley, hunger was my most vivid memory and an education was my greatest desire."--Billy C. Clark

Billy Curtis Clark was an American author of 11 books and many poems and short stories, heavily influenced by his childhood growing up in poverty in Kentucky.

Biography

Clark was born June 26, 1928 and grew up in Catlettsburg in Eastern Kentucky during the Great Depression; He was a second cousin of writer Jesse Stuart. He had four brothers and four sisters, and was born to a mother who would wash clothes for extra income, while his father was a shoemaker who bragged of having made it to the second grade. He was living on his own by the time he was 11 years old, doing work to pay for high school, while living in a courthouse building. He would put out miles of trotlines and set traps to catch animals, drying the skins of the animals he caught on the courthouse's clock and selling the furs to make a living.

He enlisted in the military and served during the Korean War following his graduation from high school. After completing military service, he enrolled at the University of Kentucky, becoming the first member of his family to earn a college degree.

Writing

Clark claimed to have his first work published when he was 14-years old and a collaborative effort was underway at the time of his death to publish pieces he had written while in college together with the Jesse Stuart Foundation, to be called A Heap of Hills. The foundation has reissued eight of Clark's books that had been originally published by G. P. Putnam's Sons and Thomas Y. Crowell Co.

Reviewer Hal Borland in The New York Times describes the "ballad-like quality" of his 1960 autobiographical book A Long Row to Hoe, that tells the story of his life up to age 19, growing up in a community that "had more than its share of 'river trash', drunks [and] derelicts" in which the developments of electric lights and indoor plumbing did not "put an end to frontier crudeness and backwater characters". The review laments the structure of the book, but describes it as a "good story, rich in character and details, larded with anecdote and legend". The book was selected by Time magazine as one of its best books of that year, describing it "as authentically American as Huckleberry Finn". Many colleges and universities use the book to introduce students to the culture of Appalachia and its culture and the Library of Congress selected it to be recorded on a talking record for the blind. Mark Daniel Merritt composed the score of River Dreams a musical adaptation of A Long Road to Hoe. The play was written by Betty Peterson, an English professor who had been a student of Clark's.

Platt and Munk Publishers included his Trail of the Hunter's Horn in a 1964 anthology of 30 Greatest Dog Stories that also included Call of the Wild by Jack London as well as John Steinbeck's Travels With Charley. The Book of the Month Club offered as a selection his book The Champion of Sourwood Mountain.

A mule named Kate would follow Clark and his friends to school. After the mule was arrested for trespassing, he and his classmates collected enough money to get the animal released on bail. Walt Disney Studios purchased the rights to his book about the mule, titled Goodbye Kate, which has yet to be made into a film by the time of Clark's death.

The University of Tennessee Press published his novel By Way of the Forked Stick in September 2000.

Clark was selected as writer-in-residence at Longwood University, after spending 18 years at the University of Kentucky in that role as a full professor. He was the founder and editor of Virginia Writing.

Personal

The Billy C. Clark Bridge, which crosses the Big Sandy River on U.S. Route 60 to connect Kentucky and Kenova, West Virginia, was named for him in 1992.

Clark died at age 80 on March 15, 2009 at his home in Farmville, Virginia.