ALPINE, Ala. - The girl stares at the ground, the man looming beside her. Directly ahead is a path for escape. Others stand rigidly with eyes cast downward.
“They’re runaways, ain’t they? You don’t even have a concept of freedom, do you?” the man barks at her face. “You a slave, girl?”
She nods, a few others sniffle.
The 50 children, only one of whom is black, were experiencing the cruelties inflicted upon slaves who tried to escape north through the Underground Railroad.
“Slaves had to go through that every day and I only did it for an hour,” said 11-year-old Nicole Wallis, who was so frightened that she left the living history program halfway through.
The reenactment at the YMCA’s Camp Cosby, about 45 miles east of Birmingham, is one of several nationwide, but uniquely intense. Camp counselors attempt to give a realistic perspective about slavery to fourth- and fifth-grade students by dressing as slave traders, bounty hunters and abolitionist and sending students on a risky journey through the dense woods surrounding the camp.
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