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[00:00:12] John Lenox- President of Lower Eastern Shore Heritage Council: It is my pleasure at this point to introduce our guest speaker. And in doing so, I will read just a short bit about Mr. Anthony Cohen. Mr. Cohen is an historian, author, and explorer of the American past. He has twice walked roots of the Underground Railroad in 1996 and 1998. And he will soon chronicle his third journey in a documentary film titled Patrick and Me to be released next year. Mr. Cohen has served as consultant to the National Parks Conservation Association, Maryland Public Television, NASA. And in fact, trained Oprah Winfrey for her role. As Seth in the film Beloved. He is the founder of the Mener Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization that's committed to preserving the legacy of the underground railroad. He received his Bachelor of Arts in American Studies from American University. And he makes his home near Washington, DC. Please join me in welcoming Mr. Anthony Cohen. [00:01:42][89.9]

[00:01:47] Anthony Cohen: Thank you so much. Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate this wonderful invitation to come speak with you today and present. Before I start, just a few housekeeping notes. Are you able to hear me? Perfect. Great. At the end of the presentation, I'll give you some information, contacts, if anyone, a few of you have asked for business cards, which I don't have. And, um... After I'm here to speak and answer questions, but I won't shake your hand because my finger's kind of broken, so. Well today, I'm going to talk about the Underground Railroad, the history of the movement, what it was as part of our American legacy, how it operated. And a little bit about the people who traveled its invisible rails. But first, I'm going to tell you a little background on me. My name is Tony Cohen. I'm a historian of American slavery in the Underground Railroad from the western shore. I grew up in Montgomery County, born in Washington, D.C. And I became a historian. Um... Actually as a result of trying to discover my own family legacy uh... As you know my last name is Cohen, C-O-H-E-N which is a jewish name and as i'm sure you also know i don't look very jewish uh... But uh... For most of the start of my life uh... I actually never had a sense uh... About my family history or even my name. In fact, my mother, who is from Texas, moved to Washington, D.C. In the late 50s where she met my dad, who was from Georgia, who had also moved north, both to attend Howard University. And they met, got married, had me, and then moved to the suburbs, where I grew up in predominantly Jewish community. Where nobody spoke about differences. In fact, at the time, my mom was working for NASA, helping train the chimps that went up in outer space. And her boss was a man named Victor Cohen, who lived in this community called Kent Mill in Silver Spring, Maryland. And he was about to sell his house, and mom and dad were looking for a house. And he said, Joan, you should come see my place. And she went over and she saw his house and she fell in love with it. And they did the handshake and money was exchanged. She bought the property. And then the for sale sign went up. And then, the neighbors one by one would ask Victor, oh, who did you sell the house to? And he said, oh, some Coens. And then we arrived. But it was a wonderful experience. And it wasn't until maybe a decade later after we moved out of Kent Mill and lived in other places after that, that people would ask me the question, black guy, Jewish name, what gives? So in 1989, I called up my father's father, who was living in L.A. At the time, and I said, granddad, how did we get this name? And he told me that his father was born free black. During the Civil War in Philadelphia, orphaned, and then adopted by a Jewish family from Wilmington, Delaware. And that's the source of our name. Immediately, I heard the theme music from Roots in my head and I thought, wow, I gotta go out and figure this out and trace down this black line and then the Jewish descendants and I had planned on, you know. Going and knocking on the door, you know, surprise, guess who's coming to dinner, didn't quite turn out that way because I was never able to trace my name. But just starting on that journey pulled me into the deep well of history. And I found out some amazing things about both sides of my family which led me to discover ten different ethnicities, three different continents. And some lines going back 500 years. So I was able to realize that the history of the world, in a sense, flowed through my veins. Well, I started doing this research in the early 90s at a time that I was actually returning to college. I graduated from American University as a returning student in 1994. And for my senior project, I was given the task of documenting some part of history that had gone unrecorded. So I chose the Underground Railroad. And I chose my county of Montgomery. Bye. Here in Maryland, as the case study to see if I could document underground railroad activity in a southern county, in a Southern state, a slave-holding state, and what form that took and if it was part of the larger network of the underground railroad that we commonly think of operating in the North. Going on to Canada. Well how do you find something which by its very nature is not supposed to be found? Well that was the question. At the time I was working for the Montgomery County Historical Society and I remember going into the library there one day and talking to one of the librarians and told her about my project and before I could even get the rest of the words out of now. She declared that no such thing as an Underground Railroad ever operated in Montgomery County. She informed me that in the 1860 election, only six people in Montgomery county voted for Lincoln, and that it was a Southern county tried and true. So as she put it, there wouldn't have been anybody here to help the blacks anyway. Well, I began to think that I wasn't going to get any help from her and decided that I would strike out on my own and do my own research. So I had a key to the library, and at night, I would go in and dig through all the files that were normally off limits. And there, the Underground Railroad started revealing itself. One of the first things I discovered Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Was in local papers from our county going back into the 1850s, in particular the Montgomery Sentinel. And there I discovered runaway slave notices, and you've all seen these things, gives the description of the person who escaped, a reward was offered, but surprisingly great details as to the roots, accomplices. Costumes and other disguises, weapon rate, and direction were actually listed in many of these ads. So, specific roads were mentioned, such as Rockville, what's now today Rockville Pike in our county, or the C&O Canal. Other ads were from the county sheriff, who actually captured people out on the roads and we're posting their information. To find their owners, to come forth and pay the jailers' fees and pick up their runaway property. After that, I actually found letters from people who had described the escapes of ancestors. In our local courthouse, I found court cases of people who'd been tried and convicted of harboring slaves, people whose names never trickle down to the history books, because they weren't considered heroes. In their time. And then probably most illuminating was after a few months of research in the U.S. Archives, National Archives in the Library of Congress, finding primary documentation there, fugitive slave cases, slave narratives where people got to the North, recorded their stories for the future. And gave intimate details of how that system was created. Well, I gathered up all this research. In the course of it, I discovered six different routes that were used in Montgomery County on the Underground Railroad and three safe houses. I wrote my paper, I got an A, and I graduated with a history degree from American U. Thank you very much. And then, upon graduating, I faced a mystery even greater than that of the Underground Railroad. And that was, what do you do with a history degree? So, that summer, I decided, volunteer. I'll just volunteer everywhere. So, I went back to the Historical Society, and one of the docents there had learned about my paper. She read it. She said, wow, this is really good. Why don't we get some funds, maybe through a grant, to publish it as a booklet? So they got $1,200, they published 500 copies of what we called the Underground Railroad in Montgomery County, a history and driving guide. So it had a map and you could actually follow the route and see the different places that were associated with that history. And at that moment I thought my connection with the Underground railroad had finally come to a close. This was December. 1994. Well, first week of February rolls around and I get a call from the Historical Society. They said that all 500 copies of the booklet, printed six weeks earlier, were gone. Public school system had bought them. Crown Books, if libraries, what not. So I had an instant bestseller. Never made a penny. But I was really amazed that a piece of history that had almost diluted history itself once recovered was something that really resonated with people and that people wanted to learn more about. The book immediately went into a second printing. But more surprisingly, I started getting calls from local schools asking if I could come out and speak to their students about this topic. Well, I've never done public speaking before, and I was really nervous when I went to my first presentation, which is in Rockville at a school called Green Acres, a little private school. And I remember going in, I had, you know, the suit on, I have the tie, the whole nine yards, and they had about three or four classes gathered in the cafeteria. 250 students. All sitting in a big semicircle waiting for the information. And all I could think was, Tony, don't bore them. So best way to icebreaker, ask a question. So I said, who here can tell me what the Underground Railroad was? Well, one girl raised her hand and she said, the Underground railroad was neither Underground nor a railroad. Okay, that sums it up. Who can tell me which direction it went? A whole bunch of people said, well, it went north. One boy said, it also went south. For instance, if you were a slave in Texas, you weren't going to Canada. You would escape across the Rio Grande and seek protection under the Spanish flag. I'm thinking, oh, really? That's good. And then they started talking about the abolitionist movement and Bloody Kansas and all of these amazing aspects of the history. And I began to wonder, well, what am I here for? But not to be outdone by third and fourth graders, I said, so you know a lot about the Underground Railroad? How many of you here have traveled the Underground Railroad? Well, they went silent, and I thought, yeah, I got them. And then I asked them, how many of you came to school today by way of Rockville Pike, which is about a mile from their school? Most of the hands went up. And I said, well, you have traveled the Underground railroad. And I began to tell them stories of how that Thank you. You know, well-travel route in our county had been used by fugitive slaves. And my stories must have been really vivid because after a few minutes one boy raised his hand and said, Mr. Cohen, were you afraid when you escaped on the Underground Railroad? And you're not supposed to hit children. But I explained that I was not that old. But what I thought was really amazing about that was, unlike the teachers I had, who many of them, good, wonderful people, but taught out of the textbooks what we knew at that time. I was able to give them something that actually illuminated their mind, and I thought that was an amazing thing. Well, after that first presentation, I went on and spoke for other schools, and at this time I was actually trying to take all of my notes. I was going to arrange them and then donate them from my book, donate them to the Montgomery County Historical Society. And I remember I'm... Sitting there one weekend and I'm putting things in different piles, including these maps that I used to make, maps of my county and I had all of the different points of interest and routes highlighted and marked up and it just dawned on me as I looked at this map that everything that I had documented I had in front of me ending at the borders of my county. And I thought, well, Rockville Pike goes, you know, on up out west towards Pennsylvania, and this route goes this direction and that direction, and I thought wouldn't it be interesting to do the same kind of research in the next county, connecting those routes, and then in the following county, doing the connections there. And I thought, interesting, but who has the time for that? And then I'm looking at it and like, I guess, you know, someone could start on one of these routes and maybe walk all the way to Canada, stopping along the trail and asking people what they knew about the Underground Railroad, what kind of artifacts, family stories, local history would be revealed. And would that be enough to link somebody along this invisible path to freedom? Well, I thought, that's what I should do. I should walk the route of the Underground Railroad. If only I had time to do that. Then I remembered, oh, I'm unemployed. Of course I have time to walk the road of the Underground Rail Road. So as I was going around that spring and the following fall, I would ask kids about this idea. And in one class I just announced. That the following May, May of 1996, I planned on walking the route of the Underground Railroad from the Quaker community of Sandy Spring, Maryland all the way to Canada, passing through five states nearly 1,000 miles on foot by boat and rail using only the methods that were available to the fugitive slaves at the time. And I remember I'm telling this group, It was fourth graders, this whole thing. Waiting for their reaction and first hand up. Mr. Cohen, what are you gonna wear? And then, will you carry food and what will it be? And then the third question, so if you're walking down the road and it's the middle of the night and you're in the wilderness and there's no bathroom around, what're you gonna do? And instead of asking that, I said, well, what would you do in that case? I will not repeat what the students said. Thank you. But I thought, aha, why not get the students to actually do the planning of the script for me? So we took this room with students, which was actually three different classes pulled together. One was a home at class. And we had them decide what I should eat, how much food I should take, and what a well-balanced diet would entail. The geography class figured out the path that I could actually take on my journey. And the math students calculated how many miles I would have to walk each day to reach my destination in my given time. And so they're in there a little... Discussion groups and they're doing their calculations and then all of a sudden one girl in the back raises her hand and says Mr. Cohen I don't think you should go on this trip because my mom says there are white people who don't like black people and if you walk through their town they put a sheet over their head and they'll chase you. Well she was obviously talking about the Klan and as soon as she raised the specters all of the kids looked just terrified. And then one by one. Suggesting ways that I could heavily arm myself. Machine guns, machetes, tasers, nunchucks were all suggested. One boy said his father was a member of the National Rifle Association and could get me in on target practice. But my favorite one was the girl who said that she had read the biography of Harriet Tubman, the great heroine from Maryland, as you know. Who made her way from the eastern shore to parts north and then returned to pull out family and friends. And she said when Harriet traveled, she always carried a pistol and never lost a passenger. And I kind of realized at that moment that even though the distance between them and period of history was was so long and so deep that still if presented with those circumstances today, that those particular kids probably had the acumen, the moxie, if you will, to actually make that journey and to think out all the processes in the same way as those original night travelers did. So as I went from class to class, I had them plan my journey. One boy told me that I needed to get something called an Internet website. This was 1995, and so I was able to partner with the national parks who were doing the initial work on their Underground Railroad Network to Freedom to actually commemorate and enshrine the history of the Underground Railroads through the national park system. And they discovered I was actually passing through a couple of national parks with Grand Railroad history, so they sponsored my web page. Which went up about six months before my journey, and it had an email contact and it had my itinerary. And as soon as the itineraries went up, we started getting emails from people who had done web searches of certain locations or maybe even where they lived, and then emailed me and said, hey, I see you're coming through my town. What a great project. If you need a place to stay, I'll put you up for the night when you arrive. And so by the time I struck out on the route, May 6th of 1996, I had already had a place to stay every night for the entire length of my journey. So the Underground Railroad of Old and the Information Superhighway intersected and a Well, how did I do it? I packed it back. With three changes of clothes, which vastly went down to two changes of clothes. Food for about two days, which quickly dwindled to nothing because as I went from place to place reaching my destination at the end of each evening people would put me up, feed me, wash my clothes if I had clothes that needed washing, excuse me. And in the morning make me breakfast and then give me a packed lunch that I could carry and eat till I reach my next stop. So I didn't have to carry food as I went along the way. I walked anywhere from 10 to 25 miles a day. 10 miles was 3 hours, 25 miles was a full 12 hour day. And I would stop in different towns along the way and ask people what they knew about the Underground Railroad. In a small town, always go to the postmaster because he or she knows who the town historian is or the oldest person in the town and will give you a direct introduction. And so I got lots of information that way. When I couldn't find libraries or historical societies that were open, I went to realtors' offices because they knew the histories of the oldest homes in the community. And in a few places, they'd actually call up homeowners and say, this guy's walking to Canada. Let him in your basement. So I was able to see what I otherwise would have passed by on my journey. About half of the route was done by foot, and the rest by train and boat. And even in some places, such as Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, I was carried along a five-mile route of the Underground Railroad. By a Mennonite man in his horse and carriage who had, as a child, spoken to his great-grandfather who was still alive, who was a member of the River Brethren, and their edict was, it is a sin against God not to help a runaway slave. So he took me along Christiana Pike and showed me... The three farms, which his great grandfather showed him, where he had dropped off freedom seekers on their journey. And so I fully got a sense of the lay of the land, the where, and who was involved. Well, I'll tell you one story. I finally reached Philadelphia. This is about 10 days into my walk, and I was invited to speak at a Quaker school. And I remember going there and I'm telling him about my walk and all the different things, aspects of it. And one student said, Mr. Cullen, what was the greatest escape on the Underground Railroad? And I said, I don't know. We'll probably never know, because so much of it was secretive. But I did tell him my favorite escape, and that was the escape of Henry Box Brown, an enslaved man from Richmond, Virginia. 1849 was put inside of a wooden crate by a white shoemaker whom he knew and he was literally mailed to the north. The box was sent by a horse and wagon put on a steamship which departed Richmond for Washington DC. When it arrived in see again on another wagon to a train station. For the remaining 11 hours of the journey. Henry's inside this crate. When the box is transferred onto the train, it's turned upside down by mistake, even though it said this side up. And he spent those final 11 hours traveling on his head. He arrives in Philadelphia the next day at the office of William Still. And the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. The members gather around. They tap on the lid, but no sound comes from inside. A pry bar is procured. The lid is lifted off, removed, and inside they find the body of Henry Box Brown, who then and rose to his feet. Free man in the North. Wow! How did he get in that box and how did he breathe? And of course their favorite question, what did he do to go to the bathroom? Which I also did not know. And the thing that I realized was that story and that question and that clue, if you will. Uh... Might be the answer to the one part of my journey thus far that had been missing and that is how did it feel to be a fugitive slave it was the one thing that i had no sense of I was traveling from place to place. People were putting me up, feeding me gourmet meals. The internet was working on my behalf. I was wearing my Nike trail runner shoes and doing interviews with Alex Tadwick from NPR. The Underground Railroad was like the highlight. I felt nothing of that time. So I thought, yeah, what I really need is something like Henry's escape, like being put in a box and shipped somewhere, if only. And then I thought no, wait a minute. Henry got a box, right? We have boxes today. And Henry got friends of his to put him on a conveyance or a variety of those. Let's say the train. And we still have the train today. In fact, Amtrak's right down the street because I was in Philadelphia. And I thought, hmm, what if I were to call Amtraq, tell them what I'm doing? Show them some articles, tune them into NPR, something like that, and get permission from them to maybe ride on their train inside of a crate so I could get the feel of Henry's journey. And then I thought, nah, that's dumb, Amtrak would never give me permission. And then, I thought wait a minute, Henry never asked permission, he got his accomplices. And for me... I was walking by myself, but every weekend, friends and family from Washington would come up to wherever I was on the road, and I'd be able to ditch my backpack and travel more lightly and see the people who I loved and terribly missed. And so I thought, great, why don't I turn to my friends. So that weekend, two of my friends, my walk coordinator, Suni Matamata. From Washington, D.C., and Bill Corey, a cinematographer who was filming portions of this for what I thought might be a video or something like that. They arrived, and I told them my idea. And Bill said, sure, I'd love to slap you inside of a box and ship you off to nowhere. How do I do it? Well, we had to put our heads together, and we decided that this would be the ideal thing to try. Number one, Henry, when he went, went clandestinely and illegally. So he had years after. The knowledge that he could be captured and dragged back. When I was traveling the Underground Railroad, I had no fear factor whatsoever, except I just always tried to remember not to fall into any potholes. Other than that, I thought if I'm in a crate and I don't ask permission and I'm illegally smuggled on a train, I will have a similar, if not Exact. Sense of the fear that Henry went through. At least in a Roman, a taste would be good. And my friends helping me out would essentially be assisting me in breaking the law. And we'd be on a train going between states. There's got to be some federal charges in there somewhere, so it was looking really good. So we went to Heckinger's Lumber in Philadelphia, bought $88 worth of lumber, and began constructing the crate. And if I can get some helpers can help me move this table, I'm going to give you a demonstration of what it was like in the crate, yeah, we're going to move it just right in front of the podium. And then we're going to hope it's a good table and doesn't collapse. All right. So we figured a box, four sides, a top, and a bottom. Yeah, I think that will hold me. And so basically, I sat on the ground like this. I pulled my legs tight to my chest. And I was measured this way, this way and this way. And the dimensions of the crate. Were 24 by 28 by 30. That gave me enough room to do this, to do this, and in a tight squeeze. I was able to get into this position. This was the lifesaver position, but I was not aware of that at the time. So we start constructing the grate, putting together the walls first, taking screws about yay long, and driving them into the frame to create the structure. We put together the three sides, back, side, top, and bottom, leaving the front door off. To it, we attached hinges, then mounted it to the box, and it became a trap door with a hook latch inside, so that at any time I was in the box I could lock that panel shut. But at any moment I needed to get out of the box I could unlatch it and push it open. It was the escape hatch that Henry didn't have. In his crate, he had a little auger called a gimlet, enough to drill little holes about yay big, which proved almost detrimental to him, because it didn't allow enough air. But in hindsight, and having the experience of his story, I thought, well. I'll just drill bigger holes. So we drilled holes about this big, five holes on each side of the box. And once I was in the box, I realized that there's a big hole. And anyone from the outside can just look in it, see me sitting there, and I get caught. That's really smart. So then we took letters, the kind of peel-off letters that you use to write your name or address on a mailbox. And we put those over the holes. On the outside of the box. So the five holes on one side became B-O-O K-S, indicating the alleged content. And the idea was the box would be put on the coach car in the section of the car that's usually reserved for piling up luggage and that Bill and Zuni would actually be on the car with me in the seats nearby. Box pushed into the corner, leaving enough space that if I should run out of air, I could push the stickers out and breathe from the aperture. And at the point that they were ready to disembark from the train, they'd restore the sticker and no one would be the wiser. So we put this together. We were told by Amtrak that for the crate of books we were shipping to New York. If it weighed more than 200 pounds, it had to be accompanied by a pallet. And we had to have some way of securing it to the pallet, so we had eye hooks around the bottom rim of the crate. And on the back of the crate we had wheels and that way I could go from upright position To this position when I needed to be rolled to wherever they needed the box And then once I was at my destination the box would be put on the pallet Right again, hopefully and the only way to secure it was by putting ropes across the box through the eye holes And that way, I was assured that I would not travel on my head So the day arrives, May 17th, 1996. Beautiful spring day the day before. Beautiful spring morning. In my mind the night before, I'm thinking, what happens if you need to go to the bathroom? That kid's voice was in my head. So I fasted. Nothing in, nothing out. Just half a cookie at midnight. Water at six in the morning and a half glass of orange juice as I was entering the crate It's put in the back of a van taken to the 30th Street train station in Philadelphia The box is pulled out and I am rolled up a ramp in to the main concourse of the station at this time It's 1135 and so I would learn later the temperature outside Was registering at 89 degrees It would peak at 100 in New York by the time I arrived. So I lived. But the box was already sweltering. Bill and Zuni were like, "are you OK? There must not be air in it". And I said, it's nice and cool in here. Lots of air to breathe. But I was lying. I was fastly running out of air. I knew that within 15 minutes, I'd be on the train, and then moments after that, we would depart. So I had planned to open the crate just a little, that trap door, or breathe through those holes once I was on the trains. So I didn't want to let them know. Well, the box is rolled into the station. It comes to a standstill. From where the walls were joined together, each panel had a small fissure through which light could pass so the box inside was fully illuminated. So I could see inside. I could hear what was going on outside. I just couldn't see outside. Bill and Zunni walk away. A moment later, Zunny comes back with, um, with one of the station attendants. Is this the box you're sending? Yes, she replies. Where is it going to? New York City. What time? Noon. He's like, I'm sorry, ma'am. If you wanted this box on the next train, you should have been here an hour ago, because it has to be weighed, paid for, and inspected. I'm thinking, inspected? Zuni must have been thinking the same thing. And she says, um, uh. And he said, leave it with me, I'll get the paperwork for you. I'll put it on the next train, which arrives at 3 o'clock. It has a lot of stops, so it'll get to New York around 6 tonight. You will then be notified. She said, well, I'm going to be on the train. He says, not on the 12 o' clock train with this grade. You'll either have to wait, or it'll have to go solo. And she's like, but I can't be separated from my box. And he's like is there something in the box I should know about? And she said no, it's just full of jewels and family heirlooms and I don't want to be separated. He said, well, 3 o'clock's your option. And it needs to be checked in by 1 o' clock. So he walks away. Zuni leans over the lid. "Tony did you hear that?" I'm like, yeah, Zuni, I heard it, what should we do? And I said, the first thing we should do is stop talking to the box. Roll me somewhere where no one will see you talking to me. So they pushed me into an alcove and I actually came out of the crate. We monitored the check-in desk for the next 45 minutes. All sorts of parcels, large and small, were going through. Nothing seemed to be inspected. So I go back in the box at five minutes to one, rolled up to the counter. The box with me inside is placed on the scales. I weigh in at 210 pounds. The cost to ship that one way from Philly to New York was $25, whereas each of the coach tickets one way for Bill and Zuni were $75. So it's easier to go by crate than coach, but don't try it. So. They get me off of the scales onto an elevator which took me down to the loading dock. And that's really where my journey began. And I won't tell you the whole thing because we'll be here for another hour, but I'll give you scenes. I'm sitting there on the platform and someone comes up to the crate and on the lid goes And I thought it was the end. And then I heard. But sounded like paper, someone brushing paper or something. I'd later learned that it was actually the shipping bills being adhered to the lid of the box. Then moments later, a truck pulls up on a loading dock, stops within feet of the crate, the vehicle is idling, I hear the door open and close, and someone walking away. The fumes started filling up the crate. I was scared. I immediately reached for the door and then the door to the vehicle opens and the vehicle drives away. Who knows what could have happened if I hadn't had that trap door, right? After that, maybe an hour later, beep! Boom, something hits the crate. Then beep, beep, a forklift. Now this was really great, because as the forklift took me up and down the corridors, every time it turned, air was forced through the cracks of the crate, and the temperature inside began to fall. It must have been lunchtime. They get me to where the train is. They turn off the machine. I'm still this high off the ground. They're off to lunch. 45 minutes later, train roars in the station, machine cranks up again. The door to the car is rolled open, I'm placed inside. Beep, beep, beep. Boom. Sound reverberates throughout the car as I'm dropped to the floor. Then it pulls out in another one. Right next to me. The machine withdraws, the door is rolled shut, and we're ready to go. And I'm thinking, okay, there's my box, there is another. Hello? Anyone in there? They say, watch what you ask for, so I didn't say anything. The train starts moving, and as it's moving, it's shaking slowly, and then as it's picking up speed, wind is actually circulating through the car, and what had been blackness. After about two minutes turned to bright, brilliant sunlight trickling through the cracks of the box. We were now on the road. But I'm thinking, wait a minute, there was always light, then they put me in the car, they close the door, and then the light extinguishes, I'm still in the car, there's light, and a lot of breeze. What's going on? Am I in a cattle car or something? Open air kind of thing? I wasn't sure. So. I got into that kneeling position and I scrunched my face up to the one place at the trap door that I could peer out through a little hairline crack to see what was going on and I was actually in a closed regular closed freight car except the door across from me had So as it went up an incline, the door rolled open. And as I'm peering through the crate, I see the Pennsylvania countryside flying past at about 50 miles an hour. And the box is lurching back and forth. And I'm thinking, oh, I'm getting out of this box. I'll just take a seat inside the car. And I go to open the door, and it's stuck. What I had failed to realize was the ropes that were used to bind the box were binding the door closed. I was trapped, and then I began to panic. Within five minutes of that, I was so hot from the amount of perspiration, which was coming off of me, condensing, and then falling every 20 minutes, another drop from the screw plates holding the lid of the crate, that I began starting to take off my clothes. Figured no one was around, I don't have to worry about anything. Got down to my underwear. Still didn't help. We get to the next stop. Two men get on. I'm thinking, yes, gentlemen, put the bags over there. Please close the door on your way out. The train starts moving. They're on for the ride to the station. One guy sees the box, sees on the front of it that we've taken the extra letters that we used to cover the holes. And we spelled out using Vs and an upside W. We turned to an M and some Fs we didn't need. Viva freedom. As a mark of good luck across the creek. What the heck does Viva Freedom mean, he said, as he jumps on top of the box and begins playing bongos, at which point I wanted to pound on the lid. Ah, it means I'm in here. Get off my box. I didn't do that, and it was at that moment that I realized another aspect about the Underground Railroad. I had been hyperventilating. I had be panicking. About the first half hour in, I realized, wait a minute, I'm a lifelong claustrophobe. What am I doing in a crate? But I realized every time someone approached the crate, I forgot about my physical condition. And I was totally honed and trained on... Not making a sound, not burping, please don't let me fart, sorry, don't give me away. And that the other thing was, the moment the people went away, and danger had passed, I felt like a conquering hero. And that adrenaline must have been the main fuel used by people on the Underground Railroad to get them through those moments of crisis. Well, I'm almost done. So. We're going, we're going. Maybe another hour, hour and a half later. It's just so sweltering in the box. I'm really thinking that I am going to run out of air. And I thought, I've got to get out of here some way. So I thought maybe I could use a little. A baby screwdriver I had, this is our backup plan, that if something blocked the box or something fell on it and I was pinned in, I could use a little screwdriver to dismantle the box from the inside. It was ridiculous. But I start going for the door when the train lurches, slows, and then starts a slow descent under the Hudson River, below the streets of Manhattan. Where ten minutes later it came to complete an utter stop. We were in New York. I had made it to freedom. "YESSSSSSSS!" I'm thinking, five minutes passes, 10 minutes, 15, and the train roars back to life. Oh boy, I know this is New York, I've been on this train before, they only shut off that engine when it gets to New York. Next stop, Boston. Where are my friends? Well, Bill and Zuni were on coach, they get out, they go to the attendant who looks up the shipping bill number in this computer and says, sorry, no such box on this train. He said, no, but we put it on, he said, did you see it go on? And Bill said no, and he says, well, these things always get left behind all the time. He's like, fill out this form. We can usually find them within 72 hours. We will give you a call and make arrangements to get to you. He says, no way. He says I know it's on this train, and I'm not leaving until I check. So he went down every car, found me in the last car. When they compared the shipping bills on the box, both said Bill, Corey, but they had different tracking numbers. One was addressed to Bill Corey, Penn Station, New York City, where he used to pick it up. And the other was addressed to Bill Cory, care of Sunnydale Farms, which we later discovered was a factory in Park Slope, New york, Brooklyn, that makes the little milks that go into school lunches. That's where they were going to send me, via Boston. Well They get me out onto an elevator, which takes me up into the main concourse of the station, and that's when my journey and my story really came to an end. They're rolling me along, I'm inside the crate, I can hear the announcer over the loudspeaker calling arrivals, departures, the sound of people running to greet or say goodbye to loved ones. It was just the sounds of life and I can't tell you how happy I was. Just to be alive. And I remember the box comes to a standstill, and Zuni says, Tony, are you in there? And I'm like, yep, still here. You can come out now, baby. And we're taking off the ropes. And I said, Zuni, stop talking to the box. Push me somewhere where no one's going to see. So they pushed me into an alcove. She taps on the lid, I remember opening the door and it just cleared my head and looked up and there was a sign in front of me on a desk that said Amtrak Police and I got right back in the box. And they had put me into the security guards' alcove. (crowd laughs) Yes. So then they get me out onto another elevator which took me out to the street. And this is where my story really does come to end, I promise. If you've ever been to Penn Station New York City, you know it's across from Madison Square Garden. And on a Sunday, they cordoned off all the streets around the station in the subway so that people coming out of the venue can just pour out in the streets and not be hampered by traffic. So there I am on the sidewalk. It's just a little after 6, and a game has just let out. Bill's over here filming. Suni's over there doing some kind of celebratory dance. She says, Tony, you may come out now. You are a free man. Oh, it was deep. Let me tell you, it deep. And I opened the door, I pulled out, pulled it open, I slowly rose, I was all cramped up and I was wearing those boxers to where it's all sweaty and nothing else. And I go to face the camera, fist-tramp it to the sky, and the doors to Madison Square Gardens swing open, thousands of people pour out and around me and not one head turned to look. And that's New York City for you. I think they thought I lived there, in the box. But coming out of the box was the most amazing sensation I think I've ever had in my life. I didn't get Henry's journeys. It was like looking at the journey through glass. I could see what was happening to him just on the other side of the pane. But the feeling I got upon reaching New York. Wasn't jubilation, as I'm sure it was for him. It was deep despair. Despair, because I had been on the road for, at that time it was now 12 days, and I already missed being in my own home and my own community and around my own family. And I lived overseas, and I traveled, and that's not even a deal. It was just being on the road, an incredibly lonely experience, even with all the friends that I made along the way. He didn't have that. And he grasped freedom, but I realized in order for me to know what freedom felt like, I had to look back into slavery. And everything in my life was something I had taken for granted. So it was a bittersweet moment. And I now think of the Underground Railroad as the bitter suite railroad. Because indeed, yes, you can get to freedom. But what is that place? And what does it mean when you can't share it with the people you love? So that was my greatest lesson from the journey. I will close by saying I made it to Canada, I got back safely, the story kind of launched into the national press, a few months later I was on the Oprah Winfrey show when she told me that she had bought the rights to Beloved and was doing it as a movie and asked me to help her prepare for her role, which I did by bringing her. To Maryland in the summer of 1997, and using an old plantation as a backdrop for her to go into slavery. We blindfolded her, we took her there, she didn't know where she was, we put her into slave clothing, and when the blindfold came off, it was the year 1850, she had to live and work on this farm and make a simulated journey on the Underground Railroad, which is a topic for another lecture. But we had the blood hounds on her. I got a guy to hunt her down with blood hound, and we did all sorts of stuff to her. And she said later that that experience actually was a spark in 1997 to help her change the format of her show to Oprah's Angel Network, the Choose Your Life Award, and the Change Your Life TV that she did up until just a year or two ago. I'll close by saying. Today, the story of the walk and the work that I did back then is funneled through my organization, a non-profit called the Moneer Foundation. And we run the Bunnen Farm Living History Center in Germantown, Maryland, where we are doing the Underground Railroad Immersion Experience, the experience we did for Oprah. And the idea behind it isn't to teach people per se about slavery. But present a different situation so people can have an experience that will allow them to confront what enslaves them in their own lives today. And that's what I think the value of history is. It's a yardstick, it's a way of us getting perspective. And I'd just like to thank everybody here who's in this wonderful community preserving stories. Remembering all the people who do the great work that we will call history in the future. And you're doing it right, because you're going it here now while they're still here to appreciate it. And what you've presented today is really a gesture of love to your own community and to the future, thank you very much. Your wonderful audience and have a great 2013. [00:58:15][3388.3]

[00:58:28] MC: Thank you everyone for attending today's annual meeting and luncheon. We hope to see you at our next year's annual meeting. If you have any questions for Mr. Cohen, please talk to him on your way out and enjoy yourselves for the rest of the afternoon. [00:58:28][0.0] [3478.2]