His Promised Land

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 recounts dramatically how he helped fugitive slaves to cross the Ohio River from Kentucky and go north to freedom. He risked his life - hiding in coffins, diving off a steamboat into the Ohio River with bounty hunters on his trail - and his freedom to fight for the freedom of his people.