Freedom Center -- It's OUR history

On Martin Luther King day I took my daughter to visit the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. She's only 6 so I went with some apprehension. I was a little worried there might be images that would disturb her but two friends told me to go. Wow! Were they right. So beautiful, from the gorgeous memory quilt to the view over the Ohio River into Kentucky that seems so different after you've been to the film "Brothers of the Borderland" which follows a young woman's heart-stopping chase from Kentucky to a hiding place on the Ranking farm in Ohio. We especially loved the ESCAPE exhibit and the  house which was a stop on the underground railroad where the kids could go in and find a place to hide. My daughter said she would only go into the hiding place under the stairs if there was a night light.  The place we kept coming back to was the slave pen. It's a log cabin that served as a holding pen for slaves waiting to be transported to a slave market. As an adult, it was hard for me to be there but my daughter kept lingering there. She listened to the story teller. She picked up the shackles. She stood for the longest time reading the names of real people who had been there. I told her that they were real people. Finally she said "I like Bob." She put her hand on the names. "Will he be in Heaven? Will I get to meet him?" Thank you, Jesus, that I could tell her. "Yes, you probably will get to meet Bob."

And that sums up, for me, the genius of the museum. They brought the lives of real people close to me and in that way turned on its head the inhumanity of slavery... but also reminded me that as a people we still have a way to go learning to respect and honor one another.