John parker autobiography
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His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad
Parker was treated better than most people held in slavery, as he hints at many times throughout his book. The doctor who held his service for free had two sons who seemed to be progressive, sneaking him books and treating him well. Later, a wealthy widower “bought him,” a deal he put together, so his own life didn’t slip away even worse.
Still, he rightfully had incredible anger, sometimes playing that out in ways that were violent and not helpful to his own life. How Parke
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John P. Parker, Conductor, on the Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a network of free African Americans and sympathetic whites that concealed, clothed, and guided fugitive slaves to the North and freedom. The “railroad” comprised a series of stops often tended by local vigilance committees in northern communities. John P. parkerar was born into slavery in Norfolk, Virginia, but became a freeman by 1845. He moved to Ripley, Ohio with its active abolitionist community and followed his trade as an iron master by day while rescuing fugitive slaves by night. Free blacks such as Parker supplied most of the needed labor and finances to help flydde slaves. Parker, it is believed, helped hundreds escape to freedom across the Ohio River from Kentucky along the busiest parti of the railroad. He then passed them on to another “conductor,” braving significant dangers, as related in this excerpt from a recently published autobiography compiled from news
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His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad
This narrative, never before published, was told to a newspaperman after the Civil War. It follows John P. Parker (1827-1900), a determined young slave who at the age of eight was forced from his family in Virginia and made to walk to Alabama. In Mobile, Parker was sold to a doctor. There he was taught illegally by the doctor's sons to read. Parker lived in the doctor's household for several years, and then ran away to New Orleans. After a series of harrowing near captures, Parker was found by his master and returned to Mobile. He persuaded a widow to buy him and let him earn his way out of slavery through working in a foundry. Moving to Ohio, Parker worked with other members of the Underground Railroad in Ripley, a stronghold of the abolitionist movement. Parker is one of the few African Americans whose battle against slavery we can now turn to in his own words. He re