Table of Contents In this book you will read about the Underground Railroad from three perspectives Each perspective is based on real things that happened to real people who experienced or were linked to the Underground Railroad As you’ll see the same event can look different depending on one’s point of view Chapter 1 4 Josiah Braxton Runaway Slave Chapter 2 1 4 Thomas Fulton Slave Owner Chapter 3 2 2 Emma Jackson Conductor Look Look Again 30 Glossary 3 1 Learn More 3 1 Index 32 About the Author 32
4 1 The older slaves told me I am 17 They say my mother’s mother came on a ship from Africa I thought I’d live my whole life on the Kentucky farm where I grew up My life as a slave was hard We worked six days a week from sunup to sundown We slept in leaky shacks and were given just the bare essentials to live But my life was not as hard as I knew it was for slaves in the Josiah Braxton Runaway Slave
5 Deep South There they live in even poorer conditions and faced more beatings than we did on the farm My master died one full moon ago and all of his property was transferred into his widow’s hands She and her son began selling field hands To them we were their legal property We had no rights I saw a husband sold from his wife I saw three young men like me taken in chains headed for a cotton plantation in Alabama I made a promise to myself that I would not be sold off like a horse I refused to go to the Deep South farther from freedom and deeper into the places where slavery is the most cruel My chance to keep that promise came sooner than I expected While working in the fields I heard another slave Dotty sing The birds rivers and stars in her songs are the coded language of the Underground Railroad Dotty helps slaves escape from this farm and from other farms too That
