MAYSVILLE, Kentucky - Phantom slaves toil the lush, green fields of Mason County and ghostly human caravans -- shackled and chained together at the ankles -- still make their trek south on Kentucky's Highway 68.
The spirits refuse to be forgotten. They haunt the landscape and the nearly 200-year-old plantation houses -- but, more significantly, they haunt the hearts and minds of the living.
Jerry Gore found his calling listening to the "spirits of the ancestors."
The self-styled community "griot," a West African word for storyteller, Mr. Gore won't let the community forget its history either.
Clad in a multi-coloured African dashiki, the bulky 60-year-old giant walked at my side as I began my journey back to Canada. Like a small tuft of cotton candy, Mr. Gore's graying beard jutted out from his chin and his piercing blue eyes -- dark pupils nearly the size of marbles -- soaked in the land.
Highway 68 to Maysville, our chosen path, once had two very different faces.
Known as the "gateway to the south," it was once a well-worn path for slave caravans heading to Lexington, Kentucky, where slaves were sold into southern bondage. But Mr. Gore claimed it was also a "gateway to freedom" on the Underground Railroad. Under the cover of night, fugitives once discretely travelled the woodlands and fields lining the old road; they aimed to reach the Ohio River and the free north beyond.
"If you were an enslaved African on most plantations in America, you'd typically be born, live and die on the same ground," Mr. Gore said as he surveyed the fields. "This would be your world. Can you imagine that? If you did anything to displease the master, maybe they'd crack you with the slave whip for 30 to 100 lashes. When that bullwhip hit your back it would cut a gush as big as my little finger and the blood would spurt out.
"When they were running from these places, they were running for their lives. That's the story I don't think people fully understand."
Mr. Gore operates Freedom Time, an Underground Railroad museum and tour operation in Maysville. It's based in Phillips' Folly, another historic site with a dual history and plenty of ghost stories.
William Phillips, Maysville's second mayor and a slave owner, built the house in 1831. A large, wooden cell in the basement is said to have once housed slaves. Francis Armstrong, the home's third owner, is believed to have been an operative on the Underground Railroad and also founded Mason County's American Colonization Society -- a group that argued slaves should be returned to Africa.
Phillips' Folly is a place where, according to Mr. Gore, one visitor saw the "spirits of 18 chained and enslaved Africans" and a child taking his tour saw an old, antique slave cradle being rocked by invisible hands. While Mr. Gore's skills as a "griot" may be a factor, it's hard to deny that the home has an otherworldly presence.
In the Maysville area, memories can be just as haunting as real phantoms.
For 97-year-old Iva Johnson, slavery has always been interchangeable with memories of her grandmother Cicly Graham Bell.
I met Ms. Johnson at her rural home, only 20 minutes southeast of Maysville. Clad in her Sunday best blue dress, white slippers and large-framed glasses, Ms. Johnson proved sharper then most people half her age.
Her grandmother, Ms. Bell, was a field worker that tried to escape slavery.
"Grandma would try and run off, but her owner and the other men who catch runaway slaves would come after her," Ms. Johnson said. "She was trying to get to Canada where she'd be free."
During one particular flight, Ms. Bell made it the other side of a nearby creek where she huddled to nurse her baby to keep it from crying and attracting slave catchers. Despite her caution, she was caught and punished severely.
"She told me about how they'd whip her and put salt and pepper in the cuts," Ms. Johnson said, her ruby-red lips quivering and voice chalked with emotion.
Carol Bennett is still deeply affected by the oral tradition passed down in her own family. With short-cropped graying black hair and thin glasses, I met the 69-year-old Ms. Bennett at her home overlooking the Ohio River.
Mrs. Bennett's great grandmother, Scott Anna Burgess Yates, sometimes recounted a grisly incident witnessed by her own mother at Maysville's former bustling wharf. Slaves were often shipped "down river" from Maysville to be sold in Natchez, Mississippi and New Orleans.
"One woman took a hatchet and cut her hand right off to keep from being sold away from her children," Mrs. Bennett said. "She thought they wouldn't take her, but they did anyways. As the boat was going down the river, you could see the blood streaming over the rail and into the water."
During my last night in Maysville, I walked the streets with Mr. Gore, the shadows casting an eerie light on the neighbourhoods and alleyways. Large brick estates, many dating back to the slave era, stood only a few a blocks away from derelict slums. Whether the lawns were unkempt or immaculate, many were decorated with American flags -- strangely uniting the city's two solitudes. Similarly, the land will forever unite the city's ghosts with its living.
When we returned to Phillips' Folly, Mr. Gore and I made a final trip to his basement. I needed one more glimpse of the hidden alcove used by fugitives, as well as the slave jail.
As we stood inside the damp, dark cell, with its thick double-wooden walls, Mr. Gore told me a final ghost story. During a recent tour, Mr. Gore shut the cell door to create a sense of imprisonment. He claimed a member of the tour group soon noticed the door being nudged open by unseen forces.
"I don't shut the door anymore," Mr. Gore said solemnly. "They don't want to be forgotten, but they don't want any other people to be locked in like they were."
Wednesday: A night in the oldest jail in Kentucky and crossing the Ohio.
Source: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/fea ... =51317&p=2
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