Kid power

an old story, a new one, and a few cool links

This tulip poplar tree was here during the time of the Underground Railroad—photo by Bea.

Last weekend, Bea and I went with some of our friends from last year’s civil rights bus tour to an important historical site in North Carolina: a stop on the Underground Railroad in Greensboro, North Carolina. Our guide, Guilford College professor and minister Max Carter, began with a tour of a Quaker meeting house and cemetery, then led us on a hike through the woods to a spot where escaped enslaved people hid, in snowy winter and steamy summer and rainy spring mornings like the one we’d trekked into.

Max told us some incredible stories—my friend Sylvester said he thought Max could have told us hours more—but one of our favorites was a story about Levi Coffin, who was born and raised in Guilford County in an abolitionist Quaker family.

If you look up pictures of Levi you’ll likely see a stern, buttoned-up older gentleman. But like all of us, he was once a kid (Harriet finds the fact that grownups were once babies quite wonderful). Max told us how when Levi was a child, he’d encountered fugitive slaves in the very woods where we stood, and heard testimony about their lives in Quaker meeting. One person affected him greatly: an enslaved woman named Eve, who was nursing an infant and who had escaped after her enslaver planned to send her away from her husband and family. Levi brought Eve and her child food, and told his parents that he wanted to speak to David Caldwell, the powerful, wealthy, 85-year-old minister and slaveholder who planned to send Eve to live as a slave with his newly-married son in Charlotte. He needed to confront Caldwell, he told his parents, and explain why what he was doing was against God.

This was in some ways a crazy plan—Levi was only twelve years old, a home-educated Quaker boy who, like his parents, believed in nonviolence and always speaking the truth. Speaking the truth, Max explained, when actively involved in illegal actions, was dangerous. But Max told us that Quakers believe that, with a properly guided belief, you have the obligation to act.

So his parents let him go to the Caldwell home. And this twelve-year-old boy talked an 85-year-old slaveowner into keeping Eve with her family. Over the course of his life, Coffin would help some three thousand men, women, and children escape slavery, becoming known as the “president of the Underground Railroad.”

Kids were important participants in the Underground Railroad, Max told us, because they were seldom questioned. I think their natural inclination toward fairness and justice—which white supremacy tries so hard to train them out of—must have also been a powerful asset.

I thought of the power of kids again on Tuesday, when a group of Chatham moms met with our State Senator, Natalie Murdock, to talk about the NC Legislature’s consideration of the dangerous Republican plan to vastly expand school vouchers. The bill (406, “Choose Your School, Choose Your Future”) is a disaster in the making, Senator Murdock confirmed. She says that some rural counties are predicted to lose eight percent of their students in the first year alone, and that much of the money will go to wealthy families who have never had their kids in public schools. Many private schools receiving these vouchers discriminate against kids for all kinds of reasons—religion, gender, LGBTQ+ identity, and more—and there are hardly any restrictions on what or how they teach, hardly any accountability at all.

What can we do? we all wanted to know. Show up at more events? Call turncoat Tricia Cotham on the phone? Yes, sure, she said—but what she really could use is letters. From kids.

Senator Murdock says that this bill (Senate Bill 406) is “not a done deal” and that what has been most impactful and useful is the testimony of kids, which she shares with fellow members of the education committee and with all her colleagues. She had one letter from a child in her district who said that she thought it wasn’t fair that some of her friends couldn’t afford school lunches—why did school lunch cost anything at all? And how would kids who can’t pay for school lunch get themselves to private schools that also don’t offer lunches?

That’s a great question! And also, guess what? With the money in this bill, we could have free school lunch for every child in North Carolina. We could fix our bus crisis. We could buy books and renovate schools and pay teachers twelve percent more—which is still not enough, but which is far better than the insulting two percent raise the Senate wants to give them.

So, we’re going to write letters to Senator Murdock tomorrow at Great Meadow Park pavilion in Briar Chapel. Feel free to join us—we’ll be there at 3:30, with snacks and all the supplies—or email me (belleboggs@gmail.com) if you want to contribute your own letters. Later in the week, the girls and I will deliver the letters to the legislature.

I’m looking forward to hearing what these kids have to say about why they love their public schools and want to see them fully funded. I’m going to print some fact sheets for parents who attend, but I think we’ll learn a lot from the kids who show up.

Most kids don’t want to move schools, and most kids also know what their schools actually need (air conditioning in the gym! more bus drivers! respect and fair pay for their teachers!). I can’t wait to see what they write.

See you there?

Also this week, a couple of great links:

The brilliant Susan Straight produced 1,001 Novels: a Map of Literary America, an amazing, interactive literary map of America, for the Los Angeles Times. Mattaponi Queen, my first book (which just turned 13!), is featured in “Capes and Tidewaters, Shifting Coasts and Capitals”).

The story of Marie Bolden, the 14-year-old Black girl who won the first national spelling bee in America.

Tina Turner’s one-room schoolhouse (built by her great-uncle in 1889) is now a museum.

Here she is, remembering growing up in Nutbush:

And here she is in Rio:

Thanks for reading, Frog Troublers! More soon! Please help spread the word about vouchers and writing letters!