Every Saturday from noon to 4 p.m., you can step back in time and walk through the history of the local anti-slavery and abolitionist movement right in the middle of University Circle.
The Underground Railroad Interpretative Center at the Cozad-Bates House hosts free tours with volunteer guides and a “find-and-seek” — a card full of questions that can only be answered by walking inside and outside the property of the Cozad-Bates House.
I decided to try the find-and-seek challenge myself with a little help from Restore Cleveland Hope Board Member Jeanne vanAtta and volunteer Denise Oliver as my tour guides and experts. Some of the answers appear below, so feel free to steal them. It’s not cheating really, you’re just doing your research.
Question: Who is Joan Southgate?
You’ll find a portrait photo of Joan Southgate and hear her story at the entrance to the center. She is honored as one of the most influential advocates for restoring the Cozad-Bates House and developing it into the Underground Railroad Interpretive Center.
In 2002, when Southgate was 72 years old, she decided to “walk in the feet of her ancestors,” OIiver said.
Southgate started in Ripley, along the Ohio River by the Kentucky border, and walked to St. Catherine’s in Canada.
That was “the path that the freedom seekers were going in,” Oliver explained. Southgate, who received a lot of media attention at the time for her walk, “is the reason why this house was saved.”
Southgate’s book, “In Their Path: A Grandmother’s 519-Mile Underground Railroad Walk,’ tells the story of her journey and highlights the anti-slavery movement in the Ohio communities she and her ancestors traveled through.
Question: Who said, “I myself have worked many a day in the field with runaway slaves and always sat at the table to eat with them.”
Have a seat at the picnic table near the side entrance to the Cozad-Bates home and you’ll easily find the words of Justus Cozad embedded into the path around you. Justus Cozad was the son of Andrew and one of the first Cozads to live in the home. The Cozad family were abolitionists and actively worked on Cleveland’s Underground Railroad. Justus Cozad wrote about his father assisting runaway slaves in his memoirs.
Question: What did Toni Morrison add to this landscape?
Fans of the beloved “Beloved” author Toni Morrison can find a bench installed by the Toni Morrison Society’s Bench By the Road Project at the corner of the Cozad-Bates property, just behind the bus stop at the corner of Circle Drive and Mayfield Road.
Did you know that the Beloved story actually happened right here in Ohio? Oliver explained that the author, who was born in Lorain, learned of that story and “just fleshed it out.”
“The reason why the bench is there is because there was nowhere to mark the road of the Black freedom seekers,” she added. “There was no monument to show that they even existed. And so that’s what these benches are for. The benches are all over.”
Question: How did some of the freedom seekers travel from Cleveland to Canada?
Some traveled across Lake Erie by boat, making Cleveland one of their last land stops in the United States on the Underground Railroad.
“Cleveland was an important destination,” said vanAtta. “Forty percent of the people who escaped from being enslaved passed through Ohio. ”
She showed an African-American quilt on display at the center featuring a diamond-shaped pattern that became Cleveland’s symbol on the Underground Railroad, known as “The Crossroads.”
“It’s a collection of diamond shapes put together,” she said, “just like Signal Cleveland’s logo has recreated. Cleveland was the only city that had its own quilt logo.”
Listen in as Signal Cleveland Reporter Gennifer Harding-Gosnell takes a tour of the Interpretive Center and learns some fascinating details about the Underground Railroad, Toni Morrison and the family of poet Langston Hughes.
For more information about Restore Cleveland Hope’s Underground Railroad Interpretive Center at the Cozad-Bates House, visit this website.
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