I cannot find here in this world-famous place, where more than four million people come every year to visit, a single plaque or any kind of memorial bearing the name of any of the more than 30,000 slaves who crossed into freedom from the United States to Canada through Niagara Falls, after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
Not even Harriet Tubman, the "Black Moses" probably responsible for leading more of the slaves to freedom than any other individual, is recognized among the many statues and memorials that decorate the parks on both sides of the border around the falls.
Though he is rumored to have frequented the black neighborhoods here, where he is said to have had several acquaintances, there is no written memory of Frederick Douglass. W.E.B. Du Bois was here too, looking for a place to hold a conference, a hotel to house the 39 guests of the Niagara Movement. But they were the famous names. Lost forever are those thousands of nameless, faceless souls who were just passing through, on their way to a better life up north in Canada.
They were right here, hiding, many of them, in the cellars and secret rooms in many of the small houses that once dotted the border along the mighty Niagara River from Buffalo all the way out to Youngstown. I try to imagine what it must have been like in the bitter cold of a Western New York winter, hiding, waiting for the footsteps of men who might be bringing water and food or a bullet. Waiting for the right time to cross, waiting for the signal, waiting for help that might never come, waiting to run to freedom, must have been the hardest part of the journey.
For some who traveled the entire distance on foot from the Deep South, as far away as Mississippi and Louisiana, the long walk to freedom was a desperate one, filled with mystery and the constant danger of being caught by the slave catchers and returned to the plantations. But the waiting must have been hell.
In a city that pays homage to the daredevils and suicides permanently embalmed in the wax museums, there is precious little evidence of the huge role this city played in the most troubled time of our country's history.
While John A. Roebling was planning the construction of what would become his most extraordinary contribution to the growth and expansion of the railroads and thus the American and Canadian economies, the United States was busy trying to keep the slaves from using his bridges as escape routes.
Commenting on his magnificent accomplishment in his "Memoir of the Niagara Falls Suspension and Niagara Falls International Bridge," Roebling wrote, "The Niagara Bridge, of a span of 821 feet 4 inches from centre to centre of towers, forms a slightly curved hollow beam or box of a depth of 18 feet, width of bottom of 24 feet, and of top 25 feet. The lower floor is used for common travel, while the upper is appropriated to railway business and sidewalks. The two floors are connected by two trusses of a simple construction, so arranged that its resisting action operates both ways, up as well as down. The suspenders are 5 feet apart. The beams of the upper and lower floor are connected by posts arranged in pairs, leaving a space between for the admission of the truss rods. The ends of the posts are secured between the beams in a manner that no part is weakened, and that any amount of strain can be thrown upon them without injuring or loosening their connections. There are no joints to work loose. If the timber should undergo a further shrinkage, the truss rods will simply require tightening. The depressing action of any loads is by these posts transmitted from one floor to the other. From the end of each pair of posts, a truss rod extends each way to the fourth pair of posts at an angle of 45 degrees. The rods therefore cross each other and form a diamond work. They are 1 inch diameter, their screw ends 1 and one-eighth inch. The pressure upon any pair of posts is by these rods spread 40 feet apart. The nut work on cast-iron plates is placed above or below the posts."
Roebling had no way of knowing that his bridge would help to carry thousands of escaped slaves to freedom, hidden in the very trains which could cross for the first time between the two countries along this new passage. Some of the fugitives actually crossed by crawling along the structure, holding on for dear life as they made their way along the trusses, between the posts, under the roads, inching their way to freedom.
Others did not fare as well. There is no real way of knowing for sure how many slipped, lost their grip and thus their bid for emancipation to the swirling whirlpools that lay below. Nobody knows how many souls were lost that way, but certainly there were some, and they, like those who made it, should be remembered too.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 22 2003 |