Descendants of freedom seekers featured in Windsor art exhibit

Dorothy Abbott knew her ancestors escaped slavery to Canada five generations before her. But it was when she started digging into that heritage that she realized just how far her relatives travelled to find their freedom, from Murfreesboro, Tenn., to Owen Sound, Ont. 

And she knew she wasn’t alone. 

Abbott and her daughter are one of several subjects for a photography project named North Is Freedom: Descendants of Freedom-Seekers on the Underground Railroad, now on display at Art Windsor-Essex in Windsor, Ont. 

The collection was originally created by Slovakian refugee and Canadian photographer Yuri Dojc and is now curated by Abbott.

Travelling to Windsor to speak on the collection for Black History Month, she joined Afternoon Drive to share more of her story with host Matt Allen. 

Here is some of that conversation. 

Could you talk about how you went from being a subject in these portraits to helping curate the exhibit?

When Yuri Dojc, the photographer, started the exhibit in 2016, he approached the Ontario Black History Society, where I was the volunteer treasurer there at the time. Being a descendant, it was of interest to me and over a period of a couple of years I became more and more involved with it to the point of working directly with him as his producer and now curator at this particular exhibit.

How did you end up tracing your own family heritage back to Tennessee?

I bill myself as an amateur genealogist, because I am not trained as a historian. But in 2010, I became very involved in chasing down my lineage and another genealogist had pointed out that she had found my great great grandfather on a plantation in Murfreesboro, Tenn. So, my husband and I set out to do a road trip and discover genealogy, music and food all at the same time.

It was fascinating. I mean, I already knew a lot of it, but to actually go to the place and talk with archivists, it was very fulfilling. I came back with a lot of information and was inspired to go forward and gather more.

That must have been very impactful for you.

Very, very impactful. I have created a quilt, actually, that shows six generations of my family in photos. So we’re going back into 1850 with these photos and the stories of the people that are in this photo exhibit, they’re going back to the early 1800s as well. I mean, we’re bringing our history to life and sharing it. And it’s an important story.

And I understand your family ended up settling in Ontario?

My family ended up in Owen Sound, which is recognized as the northern terminus of the Underground Railroad. They worked on the lake boats, they worked on the land. There’s a rock at the Sheffield Museum in Thornbury that has their names and many other families’ names carved into the rock. It’s an important memorial and it traces several generations of my family right up to Owen Sound.

How did these families decide where to settle in the communities they were going to live in?

I think part of it was driven by necessity to get away from some of the border towns because of the fact that slave catchers were coming across the border, recapturing people, some of them who were already free, and taking them back across the border forcibly. So a lot of people ended up in places like Owen Sound, Collingwood, Barrie, Oro Township —as far away from the border as they could get.

I want to ask about the creator of the concept for this exhibit, Yuri Dojc. He’s white, he’s a Slovakian refugee. What were your conversations like with him and where did he get this idea?

He had travelled into the United States and in northern parts of the United States, seen some memorials and came back to Ontario with the idea. He had already created a photo exhibit called Last Folio that was to commemorate people that escaped the Holocaust, and that included his parents.

When we met, we connected because my husband’s family also escaped the Holocaust and he was born a month after the war ended. And so he and Yuri have bonded over stories. And Yuri and I, I don’t know we just connected. I felt extremely comfortable and he was very open and very excited with his idea. And, very earnest. He was trying to tell a story. And he’s a good photographer, a great photographer.

What are you hoping people will take away from the conversation as well as the exhibit about the journey of your family and others?

I would like people to grasp the history. I know it’s an old story and people have said many times that they’d like to know more than just the Underground Railroad.

However, many of the people that are involved in this exhibit are their historians, their teachers, their researchers, etc. They run museums. I want people to realize that this history is important, it’s ongoing, and with what’s happening in the United States, we really, really do need to keep these thoughts first in our minds so that things like this do not get repeated.