Special thanks to our guest contributor Kevin Lydy at the National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center (NAAMCC) for writing this blog.

“I thought upon coming to a free state like Ohio, that I would find every door thrown open to receive me, but from the treatment I received by the people generally, I found it little better than in Virginia…I found every door closed against the colored man in a free state, excepting the jails and penitentiaries.”

- John Malvin, a free Black carpenter who came to Ohio from Virginia in 1827

There is no question that Ohio, in the lead up to the Civil War, was a free state.  Almost every antebellum map of the United States will verify that fact.  However, being a free state and being a welcoming state are not the same thing.  Tucked beneath the all-familiar narratives of abolition and the Underground Railroad is a history of Black Codes and extralegal aggression.  The National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce has produced a traveling exhibit called “Freed Will” that shines a light on the experience of nearly 400 newly emancipated people from Virginia who, in 1846, traveled to Ohio with hopes of establishing a new life. Instead of a warm reception, they were met with threats of violence.  An armed militia of white townspeople stood between them and their new home, 3,200 acres of land purchased by the estate of the late enslaver and Virginia statesman, John Randolph. Their story provides an opportunity for students to engage with Ohio’s complex and sometimes contradictory history in ways that address many of the ODEW’s Content Standards for the Social Studies.

Utilizing the Northwest Ordinance (https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/northwest-ordinance), specifically Article 6, students can determine the origin of Ohio’s prohibition of slavery:

There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: Provided, always, that any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid.

Students’ attention should focus on the last lines of Article 6 (“That any person escaping into the same…”), comprehending that there would be limits placed upon the upcoming new state of Ohio, which would be compelled to return any freedom seekers to states from which they escaped.  This component of Article 6 was bolstered by the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.

Nevertheless, Ohio truly was a destination for many African Americans, both freed and enslaved. It’s just that the state and its laws were not always in concert with the spirit of the prohibition of slavery. To illustrate to students the contradictory narrative of Ohio’s history, have them examine Article 1, Section 1 of the 1803 Ohio Constitution (https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-constitution) compared to Sections 1 and 3 of Ohio’s Black Laws (https://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/ugrr/1804-ohio-black-laws/), passed just one year later.  Students will see the inconsistencies and understand the restrictions that African Americans faced in the burgeoning state of Ohio. While there were many abolitionists in Ohio, most of the authors of Ohio’s constitution were white men from slave owning states.  In response to the increasing Black population of the state, the Ohio legislature drafted “An Act to Regulate Black and Mulatto Persons” which:

• stripped Black men’s right to vote,
• prevented Black people from testifying in any case in which one of the parties was white,
• required all Black residents to register with the county clerk within two years of arriving in Ohio,
• imposed fines to business that hired unregistered Black workers,
• gave rewards to those that turned in employers guilty of hiring unregistered workers, and
• prevented Black children from attending tax-supported “common” or public schools.

 Students can engage in the work of historians by examining the manumission records of the Randolph Freedpeoples (https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/local_government/).  Students should notice that many on the list are young, children even, but, more importantly, that this document fulfilled the “Black Codes” requirement of registering with the county clerk.

The resilience and resistance of African Americans, in the face of such adversity, is at the heart of “Freed Will.”  Deprived of their inheritance, the Randolph Freedpeoples eventually settled in other parts of Ohio. Their story has survived for more than a century, preserved and presented by descendants who have, to this day, continued their fight for restitution and racial justice.

The National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center has created a lesson plan that accompanies the Freed Will traveling exhibit, one that features other stories of African Americans resisting oppression and how their descendants have continued that resistance.   The lesson features the stories of Africatown in Dayton (https://rss.com/podcasts/charityschildren/823961/), the kidnapping of Peyton Polly’s children (https://aspace.ohiohistory.org/subjects/17226) as well as the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue (https://oberlinheritagecenter.org/the-oberlin-wellington-rescue-1858/).    Please contact Mr. Kevin Lydy at [email protected]  or call 800-752-2603 ext. 0 for more information about the Freed Will traveling exhibit or the lesson plan.