National Underground Railroad Freedom Center - Cincinnati, Ohio

Outside the museum, located on the riverfront and in between the baseball and football stadiums.















The beautiful Rag-a-non is located right at the beginning of your tour around the museum. The artist worked on this for 35 years, sewing each panel by hand. The piece tells the story of African American history, beginning in the upper left corner with Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, continuing with the Middle Passage to the Americas and the author's own family's history.















The Middle Passage - note the depiction of the ship as a monster eating the captives.















The faces of the Underground Railroad.















A slave pen, built in the early 1800s and recovered from a farm in Mason County, KY. The structure was used as a holding pen by Kentucky slave trader, Capt. John W. Anderson, to temporarily keep enslaved people being moved further south for sale. The slave pen played an integral role in the greater story of the internal slave trade in America.















Interior shot of the Slave Pen. The structure had two floors, with the men chained on the second story (you can see the iron rings still embedded in the beams) and the women on the lower level, cooking for the men. The slaves were often packed tightly into the building with little room to move.















Another exhibit in the museum highlights the efforts of abolitionists to help slaves escape, as well as the bravery and perseverance shown by those who tried to make their way to freedom. One successful man was Henry "Box" Brown, who in 1849 escaped Virginia by having himself nailed into a wooden box and shipped to Philadelphia. They even let you simulate the experience, albeit for a much shorter time than "Box" Brown's 27 hour journey. Josh, who is approximately the same size as "Box" Brown, tried it out.















At one point in the exhibit, following an exploration of the Great Compromise of 1850, kids were allowed to write notes to express their feelings about the question, "Did the Great Compromise of 1850 help to mend the rifts between the slave and free states, or did it make things worse?" This was one child's answer: Slavery is rong and wites should never treat blacks rong."

Just one example of the hands-on nature of this museum.















The Freedom Center lies only a short distance from the shore of the Ohio River with Kentucky on the opposite side. It is no coincidence that this museum stands here, right on the border between a slave state (Kentucky) and a free state (Ohio). Because of its location, Cincinnati was known as the Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad.