Author David Meyers on slavery and the Underground Railroad in Ohio
Ohio father, daughter historic writing team David Meyers and Elise Meyers Walker were invited to the Book Fair at Marvin Memorial Library last month. They both enjoy writing non-fiction and covering historical Ohio topics that others stay away from. Work from the duo includes: The Reverse Underground Railroad in Ohio, A Murder in Amish Ohio: The Martyrdom of Paul Coblentz, Historic Black Settlements of Ohio, Lynching and Mob Violence in Ohio, Wicked Columbus, Ohio, Look to Lazarus: The Big Store, and many more. If you want to know more about Ohio’s history, look to the writing of David Meyers and Elise Meyers Walker
In addition to selling some of their work at the Book Fair, David Meyers gave a presentation relating to the slave trade and the Underground Railroad in Ohio. He began by telling attendees that long ago, before Christ was born, people believed that some people were born to be slaves and others were born to be free. Meyers said that even though slavery “is and always will be bad,” people believed it to be right and there are still many people enslaved today.
“International slave trade goes back to the early seventh century, 1,000 years before the founding of the United States, so we didn’t invent it. We just put some interesting wrinkles in it when we implemented it,” Meyers explained.
In his presentation,
Meyers included artwork depicting slavery in other countries as well as our own which provided for descriptive yet horrifying visuals. The Atlantic Slave Trade is what supplied the U.S. with its African
Slaves. These people were kidnapped and enslaved by their own leaders and sold to South America, Central America, and the U.S.
Meyers informed the attendees that the U.S. practiced something called “chattel slavery” which meant that slave owners owned any descendants their slaves had as well as the slaves themselves. This practice was not widely used in other countries with slaves. According to Meyers, the struggle to abolish slavery began before the U.S. was even formed.
From the beginning, people were questioning slavery. “As early as the
Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which was a foundational document in American history, slavery was prohibited in any new states. Ohio was the first state to be carved out of the Northwest Territory, so we were the first state to be free from the beginning,” Meyers said.
However, pursuit of runaway slaves was permitted within these territories. When the Constitution was formed, it said that no new slaves were to be imported into
the country as of 1808. “At the time, our forefathers were struggling to make a Constitution for the State of Ohio and they came within one vote of allowing Black people to vote in Ohio,” Meyers said. If they had received that one vote, it would have been monumental.
Meyers brought up a map of the fugitive slave routes in the U.S. and it was plain to see that Ohio had the most. He then told the stories of the significant fugitive slaves that made it into Ohio for the remainder of the presentation. Meyers talked about their experiences as slaves,
how they escaped, if they were captured, the injustices committed against them, where they lived, and where in Ohio they used the Underground Railroad (you can read about all this in The Reverse Underground Railroad in Ohio).
Visit expodingstove. com to learn more about the work of David Meyers and Alise Meyers Walker, along with the other authors in the company. You can also find the books mentioned above along with many others if you want to brush up on your Ohio history.