His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad

by John P. Parker

Book Overview

In the words of an African American conductor on the Underground Railroad, His Promised Land is the unusual and stirring account of how the war against slavery was fought--and sometimes won. John P. Parker (1827--1900) told this dramatic story to a newspaperman after the Civil War. He recounts his years of slavery, his harrowing runaway attempt, and how he finally bought his freedom. Eventually moving to Ripley, Ohio, a stronghold of the abolitionist...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393317188
• ISBN13: 9780393317183
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Heroic adventures of a former slave and Conductor.

This book is based on reporter Frank Gregg's interview with John Parker in Ripley Ohio. Despite the many things that are repulsive to us in this book, the book is really about the triumph of one man, John Parker "How I hated slavery as it fettered me". Parker, even as a slave, rebels against the cruel practices and himself had to flee after beating a white woman that was whipping a slave. Gregg's `He was a mulatto with a white man's brain and imagination." shows the climate of even a sympathetic reporter. My own adopted state of Kentucky, is not shown to be in good light from 1845 to 1865, as the Borderland on the Ohio River, is inhabitant by those who hunt runaway slaves and hunt those, like Parker, who help runaway slaves. Parker is rightfully proud of Ripley as the origin of the Underground Railroad, and proud of his work as a conductor and the stories of aiding runaways are nothing short of heroic and exuberance. "As my mission was a dangerous one, I put a pair of pistols in my pockets and a knife in my belt, ready for emergencies." Parker's "day job" included inventing with patents for a tobacco press, sugar mill and soil pulverizer. As a further incentive to purchase this book, proceeds benefit the John P. Parker historical society which has preserved Parker's house in Ripley Ohio. Well worth a trip!.

Excellent for Children

My daughter needed this book for research of slavery. It was great for her and she learned alot!

An Outstanding Book

I ordered this book after seeing an interesting reference to it in an article in Smithsonian Magazine. I am so very glad I did.It is an amazing book, a very rare combination of thought provoking historical narrative, and Indiana Jones-ish excitement. I only wish it had been ten times as long-I would have devoured it. If I hadn't read the preface, which gives the background, I would have thought it was fiction, and pretty darn nail biting fiction at that. I have given quite a bit of thought to this book, wondering what I would have done, given the same situation, and concluded that you can only hope you would be strong enough to rise to the circumstances, but fear is a powerful deterrent.I am giving my copy to the history department chair at my daughters' high school, and will ask them to consider making it a part of the curriculum.

WOW!!!

I brought this book some time ago and just got around to reading it. Well, let me tell you that I can kick myself for not reading it sooner. You will get through this book so fast your head would spin because it is so interesting you will not want to put it down. John P. Parker, my hero.

Engrossing account of the Underground Railroad

John Parker's autobiography is an engrossing and often surprising account of the activities of the Underground Railroad. Parker was born and lived as a slave until buying his freedom and moving to Ripley, Ohio. There he joined forces with Rev. John Rankin in helping slaves cross the Ohio River and escape to Canada. His account is lucid, swift-moving, rambunctious, and highly literate. He describes the Ohio River Valley as "the Borderland," comparing it to the lawless, violent Scots/English border. The border, constantly raided by Abolitionists helping steal men, women, and children out of slavery and patrolled by slave-owning vigilantes intent on catching them, simmers in as treacherous a state of unrest and violence as any "Wild West" town at its worst. Parker never walks the streets of Ripley without a pistol, knife, and black jack in his belt. He never admits to working for the Underground Railroad, especially after passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, but pretty much everyone in the region knows that he does, putting his life in constant danger.Parker's account abounds in hair-breadth escapes, heart-rending failures, and startling heroics. He also reveals aspects of the Underground Railroad that one never suspects but which seem inevitable after he describes them, such as the competition that developed between John Rankin's Ripley, Ohio branch of the Railroad and Levi Coffin's Cincinnati group. Parker insists that Coffin was merely the better publicist, not the better rescuer of the two. It's also clear that for Parker rescuing slaves was not merely a fierce moral imperative but also an activity touched with excitement, zest--even, strange as this sounds, fun. There is an element of sport to his activities, despite their grim, life and death seriousness. Parker is obviously bold, intelligent, crafty--good at what he does--and he relishes the hard-won triumphs of courage and guile that allow him to free his fellow slaves. It's hard to say what place & qu! ot;His Promised Land" will take in American literature. It will not, I don't think, replace Frederick Douglass's "Narrative of an American Slave" as the country's premier account of the experience of slavery. It's not as powerful, relentless, or literarily self-conscious an account as Douglass's great work. But it may prove to be, for the Underground Railroad, what Sam Watkins's "Co. Aytch" is for the Civil War: perhaps the most engaging, colorful, and moving account by an 'ordinary extraordinary' man in one of this country's most agonizing and dramatic conflicts.