Child of the Underground Railroad: Lesson Plan for "Malinda Paris - A Memorial"
The Malinda Paris memorial was originally printed in the 1893 volume of the Pioneer and Historical Collections. The Collections contain the proceedings of the annual meetings of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society. Each Michigan county brought memorials (similar to today's newspaper obituaries) of pioneer settlers who had died during the previous year to the meetings. The memorial for Malinda Paris may be used as is with the class, or the teacher may retell it as a story.
Malinda had two experiences with the Underground Railroad:
- Her mother, a free woman married to a slave, took Malinda and her sisters and brothers in the dead of night from their home in Paris, Kentucky, to prevent their being kidnapped into slavery.
- At 18 Malinda married a free man who had been kidnapped and taken into slavery three times. Threatened with slavery again after their marriage, he fled north to Canada where Malinda joined him.
There are many stories of escape on the Underground Railroad. Some black fugitives "followed the drinking gourd," traveling at night. Others wore disguises or hid in wagons. Many found refuge in safe houses and at stations of the Underground Railroad on their way north. Malinda and her siblings were not slaves, but they were in danger of being kidnapped into slavery because their father was a slave and they were black.
Malinda's experiences from age five until she came to Michigan as a young wife and mother were undoubtedly different from those of other free or slave Blacks who fled north. Because of the secrecy surrounding the Underground Railroad, we do not know the whole story of each person's experience.
Underground Railroad experiences should be discussed in the context of fugitive slave laws. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, in effect at the time of Malinda's experiences, defined slaves as property that could be returned to the master without due process of law. There were rewards offered in some southern states for the return of fugitive slaves. Some unscrupulous slave catchers would kidnap free Blacks, turning them over to slave holders for money.
Antislavery sympathizers in northern states passed "personal liberty laws" in an attempt to protect runaway slaves and free Blacks living in their jurisdictions. Local magistrates there often refused to return runaway slaves to slave owners or their agents.
In an attempt to strengthen the fugitive slave laws, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. This act, part of the Compromise of 1850, permitted the recapture and extradition of escaped slaves. Under this law, persons who helped escaped slaves could be fined and imprisoned. The law made federal marshals, rather than local magistrates, responsible for the return of fugitive slaves. The law was an attempt to shut down the Underground Railroad and prevent slaves from finding safety in the northern states. Because of this law, more slaves fleeing north crossed the border into Canada for sanctuary. This law was one of the inspirations that led Harriet Beecher Stowe to write Uncle Tom's Cabin, which further excited antislavery feelings in the northern states.
The Fugitive Slave Act was a concession to the South when Congress admitted California to the Union as a nonslave state, abolished slavery in Washington, DC, and declared that the question of slavery in the new territories of Utah and New Mexico could be decided by a vote of the settlers in each territory. This "Compromise of 1850" was an attempt to avoid secession of the southern states and/or a war between the states.
- Students will discuss the story of Malinda Paris as told in an 1893 memorial.
- Students will trace the journey of Malinda Paris from Kentucky to St. Clair, Michigan.
- Students will develop their own questions about the unknown elements of Malinda Paris' life.
Michigan Social Studies Curriculum Content Standards
This lesson presents an opportunity to address, in part, these standards:
- 1.1.4. Students will place events of their lives and the lives of others in chronological order.
- 1.2.7. Students will recount the lives and characters of a variety of individuals from the past representing their local community, the state of Michigan, and other parts of the United States.
- 1.4.7. Students will identify the responses of individuals to historic violations of human dignity involving discrimination, persecution, and crimes against humanity.
Read or tell the Malinda Paris story for the class. Or, provide older students with a copy of the memorial to read on their own. Discuss and trace the events of the story. Use any or all of these questions and other activities:
Discussion Questions:
- What does it mean that Mrs. Robinson was "born free?" (Answer: She was not a slave—not owned by a master. At least one of her parents had either been born free or had
purchased their freedom.)
- Why were Mr. and Mrs. Robinson afraid that someone might kidnap their children in Kentucky? (Answer: Unscrupulous people might steal them to sell them into slavery.)
- Why did Mr. and Mrs. Robinson and their children leave at night? (Answer: Because he was a slave, Mr. Robinson couldn't be seen leaving his master's place or he would be hunted as a run-away.)
- What are bloodhounds? (Answer: These dogs with a smooth coat, drooping ears and sagging jowls have a keen sense of smell that makes them good at following a scent trail. Slave-trackers, or slave-catchers, used them to help track runaway slaves.)
- Why might a black person like Malinda's husband William go to Canada to live? (Answer: Canada did not allow slavery. It also did not permit slave trackers to take slaves back to their owners in the United States.)
- Why do you think the people of St. Clair called Malinda Paris, "Aunt Malinda?" (Answer: They loved and respected her because she cared for others.)
Time-line Activity: Put the following items on the chalkboard or on a hand-out in a mixed-up order. Ask students to put the events in chronological order. (For a shorter version of this exercise, use only those items marked with an *.)
- Malinda Robinson is born in Kentucky, one of nine children.*
- Malinda's parents go the first nine miles of a trip to take their children to freedom.
- Mr. Robinson goes back to slavery, and his wife and children go north.
- Malinda meets William Paris in Terre Haute, Indiana, and marries him.*
- Malinda and William live in Vincennes, Indiana.
- After slave holders again try to enslave William, he flees north to Chatham, Canada.*
- Malinda joins William in Canada where she gives birth to their daughter Jane.*
- Malinda and William Paris go to Detroit, Michigan.
- Malinda and William Paris move to St. Clair, Michigan, to work in General Brown's hotel.*
- William, Malinda's husband, dies.*
- Malinda receives a pension from her son's service in the Civil War.
- Malinda dies in St. Clair.*
Map Activity: We do not know the exact route the Robinson and Paris families took north, but the memorial tells us that they stopped in these places.
- Paris, KY (suburb of Lexington)
- Terre Haute, IN
- Vincennes, IN
- Chatham, Canada
- Detroit, MI
- St. Clair, MI
Locate and mark each of these cities on a map of the U. S. and Canada. Looking at the map, discuss routes you think the Robinson and Paris families might have taken from one city to another. How far did Malinda travel with her mother? with her husband? Compare the map to a map that shows Underground Railroad routes. Are any of the cities in which the Robinson or Paris families lived near known Underground Railroad
stations?
Question Activity: Ask each student to pretend that she or he is Malinda's daughter, Jane, or her son, Henry. What would each like to ask their mother Malinda about:
- her early childhood years in Kentucky,
- when she left her father to go with her mother and brothers and sisters to Indiana, and
- how she and her husband William Paris came to live in Canada, then Michigan.
Ask students to share their questions with the class. Discuss possible responses.
Writing Activity: Many books and stories about the Civil War are "historical fiction." The author uses some real historical facts or people, then makes up the rest of the story to reflect what might have happened. Some popular books for young people about the Civil War period that are historical fiction include:
- Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt
- Barefoot: Escape on the Underground Railroad by Pamela Duncan Edwards
- Bull Run by Paul Fleischman
- A Dangerous Promise by Joan Lowery Nixon
- Follow the Drinking Gourd by Jeannette Winter
- Jayhawker and Who Comes with Cannons by Patricia Beatty
- Mr. Lincoln's Drummer by G. Clifton Wisler
- Pink and Say by Patricia Polacco
- Turn Homeward, Hanalee by Patricia Beatty
- The Root Cellar by Janet Lunn
- With Every Drop of Blood by James Lincoln Collier
Encourage the students to write their own historical fiction short stories about Malinda Paris and her possible experiences, such as escaping from Kentucky when she was five years old or seeing her son Henry go off to war when she lived in St. Clair,
Michigan. Brainstorm title and story ideas with the class, writing the ideas on the chalkboard. Use encyclopedia, history books and time lines to learn about how people lived during Malinda's lifetime so students can provide authentic backgrounds for their stories.
Questions for Discussion or Research
- What do we in Michigan usually call the "war of the rebellion?" Why might people in the North and in the South have had different names for that war?
- What do we call the disease of "consumption" today? Is it still a dangerous disease? Why or why not?
- Examine differences in the information provided by the Memorial, the Obituary [PDF] and the censuses. Propose and discuss reasons why conflicting information sometimes occurs in family and public records. Invite someone trained in genealogical research to visit the class and talk about how to investigate family history.
- Read about Fannie Richards, a black educator in Detroit from 1863 to 1915. Discuss the lives of Malinda Paris and Fannie Richards. What qualities did each need to accomplish the achievements they made? How were their lives different, similar?
- See the slave chains in the Civil War gallery. Encourage a minute of quiet reflection for students to consider what it must have been like to be locked into those chains. (These chains were used by a woman in Bowling Green, Kentucky, to shackle her slave in her barn as the Union troops approached. The slave sawed through the chains and walked to the camp of the 23rd Michigan Infantry where a blacksmith removed them. Colonel Spaulding kept the chains and presented them to the State Librarian upon his return to Michigan.)
- Find the map showing routes of the Underground Railroad on the wall of the Civil War gallery. Discuss reasons the slaves might take the various routes shown on the map.
- Bloodhound: Dog with a smooth coat, drooping ears, sagging jowls and a keen sense of smell that makes it good at following a scent trail.
- Consumption: A wasting disease with symptoms of coughing and spitting up of fluid from the lungs; tuberculosis%#151;a disease caused by a microorganism Mycrobacterium tuberculosis and marked by lesions in the lung and other parts of the body.
- Extradition: The legal transfer of a person accused of a crime from one authority to another, usually in a separate geographic area, as from one state to another or one country to another.
- Freeman: Person who is not a slave; person with the rights of a citizen.
- Freedman: Former slave who either purchased his or her freedom or was granted freedom by an owner or by a legal act.
- Fugitive Slave Act, 1850: Provisions of the Compromise of 1850 that set up a system for returning escaped
slaves to their masters from all states and territories of the United States. It permitted a slave owner or person working for him (slave catcher, slave tracker) to go into a free state (state that had outlawed slavery) to take back an escaped slave. Federal marshals were required to enforce this law.
- Memorial: Something that serves to help remember a person or an event.
- Obituary: Published notice of someone's death. It often includes a brief biography of the person who died.
- Pension: Money paid to a soldier or a worker or to their surviving relatives as a retirement benefit.
- Slave: Person owned or bound by servitude to another.
- Underground Railroad: A secret network of "stations" and "safe houses" that helped fugitive slaves find sanctuary in free states or Canada.
- War of the Rebellion: The Civil War; the war between the northern and southern U. S. states that lasted from 1861 to 1865.
- Aboard the Underground Railroad: A National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary
- Blockson, Charles L. Escape from Slavery: The Underground Railroad. National Geographic, July 1984, pp. 2-39.
- Campbell, Stanley W. The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850-1860. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1970.
- Excerpts from Slave Narratives (Steven Mintz, ed. University of Houston)
- Levine, Ellen. If You Traveled on the Underground Railroad. NY: Scholastic, Inc., 1988.
- Taking the Train to Freedom. National Park Service Underground Railroad Special Resource Study
- Benjamin Drew - Testimony of the Canadian Fugitives - Interviews with former slaves who escaped to Canada
Contact the Michigan Historical Museum.
Updated 08/19/2010
