Morning Glory Stories: Black Southern Resistance & History in the Carolinas pt. 6
I spent the past holiday weekend in Greenville visiting with family, and couldn’t resist making a stop in Little Washington visiting a place I hadn’t quite had the words to describe in my previous few posts about the riverfront town. The Washington Waterfront Underground Railroad Museum is situated on the corner of Main and Gladden street in the town center. It’s housed in a refurbished, original orange train caboose which faces the calm waters of the Pamlico. During my first visit this past August, I was able to observe one of the many presentations done by founder, historian, and lead researcher, Leesa Jones and her kind husband.
Because of the condensed space inside the museum, presentations are done under the shade of a large tree outside. I showed up a little late so Miss Leesa was already animatedly recounting the various ways enslaved Africans liberated themselves in the area. Beside Miss Leesa was a small table dressed with a blue and white checkered tablecloth filled with miscellaneous items. At one point she picked up a bowl of black eye peas. Shaking the peas in her palm, Miss Leesa explained how people would throw them out around the harbor when they knew eyes were watching and it wasn’t safe to escape. With a short sentence and a flick of her brown wrists, the seemingly regular kitchen ingredient transformed into a liberation tool for Black fugitives. See, the Washington Harbor was known as an alleyway to freedom. Generations of Black folk who were held captive in Washington found refuge in the sweet waters of the Pamlico, and embarked on journeys towards a life beyond enslavement. Some even found their way back to the African continent they’d been stolen from.
Other items Miss Leesa revealed to the beguiled audience included brown eyed susans which signified a home was a safe harbor for fugitives, onions that were rubbed on the skin to throw off one’s scent from dogs, as well as black walnuts which were boiled and used as a dye to darken the skin & hair of fugitives as a disguise. She even taught us one of the coded songs used to secretly teach enslaved Black people how to read and write. Miss Leesa ended her presentation with a flourish of the many skirts she wore to show colorful bands sown at the bottom of each layer which meant a different message enslaved women would flash to passing horse carriages driven by white allies, freedmen, or enslaved coach drivers.
We sat enraptured for over an hour, listening to Miss Leesa share the secrets and technologies of those who dared to get free. A sense of amazement at the ingenuity and commitment of Black people began to blaze in my stomach, warming my chest. They created entire systems and localized networks of secret communications that were literally life or death; that were foolproof enough to last for decades, but flexible enough to shift daily due to constant surveillance. These are the people I come from.
After the presentation, I stumbled through the inside of the museum trying to retain as much of the information filling the walls of the narrow structure, and promised to come back and really take my time with it all.
This weekend I was finally able to return to the small orange museum and spend some time talking with Miss Leesa after she finished her presentation for the day. Through her I learned that Little Washington was known as a rice farming town, much like the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia. Along the eastern shores of the Carolinas, African rice farmers were enslaved by white colonizers who depended on their expertise to grow and cultivate one of the the most prized delicacies from the region, Carolina gold rice.
Miss Leesa went on to tell me about growing up as a little girl in Washington during the 1950’s, catching tidbits of her grandmother and aunts home remedies that could cure various ailments. Common knowledge of local herbs, barks and roots was healing wisdom that had been passed down from enslaved ancestors- the very people Miss Leesa has spent years researching and her weekends teaching others about.
In hearing the many stories from Miss Leesa’s childhood and her lamenting not remembering more, I realized that the Washington Waterfront Underground Railroad Museum is an answer to an ancestral call to remember. A call that’s been ringing in my ears ever since I began this series of pilgrimages into the depths of my origin. It felt affirming to stumble across an elder who has also felt compelled to listen to the call and made it her business to do so.
*Please visit the Washington Waterfront Underground Railroad Museum if you can. They operate solely off of cash donations & love to receive visitors! This post was initially published on my former blog “Morning Glory Stories: Black Southern Resistance & History in the Carolinas” on November 30, 2021.