The Underground Railroad

“[Cora] was born in winter. Her mother, Mabel, had complained enough about her hard delivery, the rare frost that morning, the wind howling between the seams of the cabin. How her mother bled for days and Connelly didn’t bother to call the doctor until she looked half a ghost. Occasionally Cora’s mind tricked her and she’d turn the story into one of her memories, inserting the faces of ghosts, all slave dead, who looked down at her with love and indulgence. Even people she hated, the ones who kicked her or stole her food once her mother was gone.” 

This quote showcases the brutality of the plantation into which Cora was born. Cora’s mother’s life was not valued at all, nor was Cora’s. However, Cora poignantly inserts a memory of being beloved within the painful story of her origins. This demonstrates Cora’s deep desire for love and belonging, despite the hardness that she will eventually have to adopt to survive and cope with the great traumas she endures. 

“Looking at them now as folks chased in and out, getting ready, it was hard for Cora to imagine a time when the fourteen cabins hadn’t been there. For all the wear, the complaints from deep in the wood at every step, the cabins had the always-quality of the hills to the west, of the creek that bisected the property. The cabins radiated permanence and in turn summoned timeless feelings in those who lived and died in them: envy and spite. If they’d left more space between the old cabins and the new cabins it would have spared a lot of grief over the years.” 

In this quote, Cora sees the cramped and delimited slave quarters as eternal. This speaks to the brutally truncated consciousness and physical existence of enslaved people. For those enslaved on Randall, the meagerness and brutality of their lives is the sum of what the world contains, and that which determines both what is possible and impossible. Too, the purposefully impoverished and cramped nature of the dwellings displays no care for the humanity of the people they house—which is another hallmark of enslavement. 

“Cora’s mother and Ava grew up on the plantation at the same time. They were treated to the same Randall hospitality, the travesties so routine and familiar that they were a kind of weather, and the ones so imaginative in their monstrousness that the mind refused to accommodate them. Sometimes such an experience bound one person to another; just as often the shame of one’s powerlessness made all witnesses into enemies. Ava and Mabel didn’t get along.” 

In this quote, Whitehead parses the delicate complexity and pain of a particular relationship between enslaved people. Not only must Mabel and Ava endure their own mounting torture and abuse, they must witness the same exerted on the other. In their relationship, this has the peculiar and painful consequence of seeding resentment for each other—due to the mutual witness of each other’s abjection and humiliation. This quote therefore displays the deep and complex psychic violence of enslavement. 

“The northern and southern halves of the great Randall plantation exchanged slaves all the time, unloading beat niggers, skulky workers, and rascals on each other in a desultory game. Nag’s children were tokens. Connelly could not countenance his mulatto bastards when their curls glowed his Irish red in the sunlight.”

This quote displays the utter objectification and dehumanization of enslaved people, as they are traded between sides of the plantation as pawns in a power game between the plantation’s owners. It also explains the particulars of the plantation’s sexual economy. Connelly is free to have sex with Nag, but she is ultimately simply an object and a body, much like his own sons, whom he cannot bear to look at, let alone acknowledge.  

“Of Mabel there was no sign. No one had escaped the Randall plantation before. The fugitives were always clawed back, betrayed by friends, they misinterpreted the stars and ran deeper into the labyrinth of bondage. On their return they were abused mightily before being permitted to die and those they left behind were forced to observe the grisly increments of their demise.” 

This quote displays the brutal reality of enslaved people's life on Randall. They are kept in bondage by the brutality and fear that encroaches upon any compassion that they might feel for one another. No one, including those within their own midst, can be trusted. And if anyone does transgress, the enslavers are sure to teach them a lesson by forcing them to witness the torture and death of those that dared defy the terms of their bondage.  

“It was customary for slaves to witness the abuse of their brethren as moral instruction. At some point during the show everyone had to turn away, if only for a moment, as they considered the slave’s pain and the day sooner or later when it would be their turn at the fold end of the lash. That was you up there even when it was not. But Caesar did not flinch. He didn’t seek [Cora’s] eyes but looked at something beyond her, something great and difficult to make out.” 

In this scene, Cora witnesses Caesar’s beating. Whitehead explains the way that enslaved people identify with each other and share in each other’s pain—both because any individual could be the next one under the whip, but also because of the inexorable bond of compassion and empathy that binds one to the other. It is also possible that this identification with other enslaved people is inflected by the fact that their individualities have been stripped from them. This quote also implies that Caesar can steel himself against the beating because he is looking towards the freedom that lies beyond Cora.

“[Fletcher] took Caesar into his confidence, risking that the slave might inform on him for a reward. Caesar trusted him in turn. He had met this sort of white man before, earnest and believing what came out of their mouths. The veracity of their words was another matter, but at least they believed them. The southern white man was spat from the loins of the devil and there was no way to forecast his next evil act.” 

This quote showcases the atmosphere of utter terror that the institution of enslavement exercised on society at large. So deep and powerful was the psychological domination that enslavement exerted that a white man hoping to help free an enslaved person had to consider the notion that that person would report him to the authorities for a reward as a real possibility. 

“Before they could figure his words, Fletcher informed them it was time for him to return to his wife: ‘My part is finished, my friends.’ He embraced the runaways with desperate affection. Cora couldn’t help but shrink away. Two white men in two days had their hands around her. Was this a condition of her freedom?” 

Although Fletcher has helped her mightily, he is still a white man. This quote showcases the way in which Cora must fight for bodily autonomy at every turn. Enslavement has taught her that her body is not her own, but she fights that notion with every fiber of her being, continually asserting her agency and endeavoring to gain bodily autonomy. Thus, Fletcher’s embrace, which he exerts upon her without her consent, is a transgression against Cora’s body. 

“Patrol was not difficult work. They stopped any niggers they saw and demanded their passes. They stopped to remind the Africans of the forces arrayed against them, whether they were owned by a white man or not. Made the rounds of the slave villages in search of anything amiss, a smile or a book. They flogged the wayward niggers before bringing them to jail, or directly to their owner if they were in the mood and it was not too close to quitting time.” 

In this quote, Whitehead lays bare the ideological and psychological reasons for the work of slave patrollers. Their work was never solely about upholding the law or returning “property,” but about exercising terrorism against Black people to uphold the social and psychological order. Patrollers terrorized both enslaved people and freemen alike because their animus was towards Blackness. The domination and subjugation of Black people, both physical and mental, is what American society depended upon. 

“Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor—if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative.” 

This quote describes Ridgeway’s beliefs about America. He pledges his complete allegiance to the idea that the theft and brutality of the American settlers is a moral right that belongs to him. To him, the ruthless brutality of land theft and enslavement is quintessentially and laudably American. 

“Maisie was two. By that age on the Randall plantation all the joy was ground out. One day a pickaninny was happy and the next the light was gone from them; in between they had been introduced to a new reality of bondage. Maisie was spoiled, doubtless, but there were worse things than being spoiled if you were colored. The little girl made Cora wonder what her own children might be like one day.” 

Cora observes Maisie, the white child whom she cares for in South Carolina. The stark difference between the white girl’s child and the reality of life for enslaved toddlers is brought to bear. And for a rare moment, Cora allows herself to conjecture about her own future and future children. Despite the horrors of enslavement, a seedling of hope for the future of herself and her unborn children glimmers. 

“To compare what had happened the night of the smokehouse with what passed between a man and his wife who were in love. Dr. Stevens’s speech made them the same. Her stomach twisted at the idea. Then there was the matter of mandatory, which sounded as if the women, these Hob women with different faces, had no say. Like they were property that the doctors could do with as they pleased. Mrs. Anderson suffered black moods. Did that make her unfit? Was her doctor offering her the same proposal? No.” 

Cora has just finished a consultation with Dr. Stevens in South Carolina. Within the examination, Dr. Stevens informs her that he knows that she has had “intimate” relations with men—which is a euphemistic and ignorant manner of referring to her rape. This displays his complete disregard for her bodily autonomy and humanity. During this visit, he summarily tells her that he and the other whites believe that Black women deemed to be inferior should be sterilized—something that would never be proposed for white women. Cora senses the injustice of his bigoted beliefs keenly, and her sense of justice for herself prevails. Despite this violence, Cora maintains an indomitable belief in her own humanity—although no white person in authority nurtures or respects it. 

“Did Sam know that the Igbo tribe of the African continent is predisposed to nervous disorders? Suicide and black moods? The doctor recounted the story of forty slaves, shackled together on a ship, who jumped overboard en masse rather than live in bondage. The kind of mind that could conceive of and execute such a fantastic course! What if we performed adjustments to the niggers’ breeding patterns and removed those of melancholic tendency? Managed other attitudes, such as sexual aggression and violent natures? We could protect our women and daughters from their jungle urges, which Dr. Bertram understood to be a particular fear of southern white men.” 

Sam relays the prevailing beliefs of the South Carolina medical establishment to Cora and Caesar. He has learned the true reason for the extension of medical services to the Black population. The doctors are gathering data and experimenting upon the bodies of Black people, to accomplish a stealthy genocide. He also lays bare the deep deception of the white South Carolinians, as they make Black people think that they are caring for them while actually harboring murderous intent. Beneath the notions of “uplift” is the true reality of dehumanization and domination. 

“Carpenter snarled when he said the word, a mangy dog hoarding his bone: nigger. Stevens never used the word. He disapproved of racial prejudice. Indeed, an uneducated Irishman like Carpenter, steered by society to a life of rummaging graves, had more in common with a negro than a white doctor.” 

In a twist of bitter irony, Stevens, who summarily sterilizes Black women, believes himself to harbor no racial prejudice. This is because he only recognizes explicit epithets as prejudice, and not his own covert form of inducing genocide. However, he does clearly see one aspect of the society to which he belongs: the notion of racial hierarchy is also used to oppress and psychologically dominate poor whites, whose resentments are directed not towards the ruling class that exploits both them and Black people, but towards Black people, the racial other. 

“The boy cried ‘Gosh!’ and ‘Sweet mother!’ at every complication in her story, tucking his thumbs into the pockets of his overalls and rocking on his heels. He spoke like one of the white children Cora had observed in the town square playing kick-the-ball, with a carefree authority that did not jibe with the color of his skin, let alone the nature of his job. How he came to command the locomotive was a story, but now was not the time for the unlikely histories of colored boys.”

Cora finds herself perplexed by a young conductor on the Underground Railroad. In a sense, she is puzzled by his vigor and his sense of freedom, something that she is not accustomed to seeing in young Black men. Through this moment, Whitehead asserts that the Railroad brings not only physical freedom, but psychological freedom as well. Although the boy toils in dark tunnels, he also toils within a chamber built by Black hands, designed to convey Black people to freedom. He himself is able to access that freedom, albeit deep underground. 

“Their melodies were bland in comparison to those of the colored musicians she’d heard, on Randall and off, but the townspeople enjoyed the denatured rhythms. The band closed with spirited renditions of two colored songs Cora recognized, which proved the most popular of the night. On the porch below, Martin and Ethel’s grandchildren squealed and clapped.” 

Cora watches the Friday Festival from her peephole in the Delanys’ attic. Tellingly, she watches as the white people become most excited by a song that the white band has stolen from Black musicians. This occurs within a festival whose climax is the lynching of a Black person, and within a state that contains the “Freedom Trail,” a road over which hundreds of lynched Black bodies hang. The cognitive dissonance and pathological, murderous racism of these white people is therefore on full display. This quote echoes contemporary debates about cultural appropriation, and implicitly makes the argument that white culture is founded on not only the physical violation and theft of Black bodies, but on the violation and theft of Black culture as well. 

“In the deathless dark, their southern heritage lay defenseless and imperiled. The riders kept them safe. ‘We have each of us made sacrifices for this new North Carolina and its rights,’ Jamison said. ‘For this separate nation we have forged, free from northern interference and the contamination of a lesser race. The black horde has been beaten back, correcting the mistake made years ago at this nation’s nativity. Some, like our brothers over the state line, have embraced the absurd notion of nigger uplift. Easier to teach a donkey arithmetic.’ He bent down to rub Louisa’s head. ‘When we find the odd rascal, our duty is clear.’” 

This quote showcases Jamison’s words at the Friday Festival. It illustrates the vicious racism of North Carolina, and lays bare the mechanisms by which Black people are othered, dehumanized, and demonized. The foundation of North Carolina’s white supremacist society is built upon the aggressively promulgated belief that Black people are predators who seek to assault white life and white order, and that Black people are sub-humans who deserve only cruelty and murder. The Friday Festival is a ritual in service of what can be called a religious and mystified belief in white superiority. On this particular Friday, Louisa is the sacrificial lamb that must be publicly killed to solidify, ingrain, confirm, and indoctrinate society members into what is essentially a cult of white supremacy.  

“Once the [European] immigrants finished their contracts […] and took their place in American society, they would be allies of the southern system that had nurtured them. On Election Day when they took their turn at the ballot box, theirs would be a full vote, not three-fifths. A financial reckoning was inevitable, but come the approaching conflict over the race question, North Carolina would emerge in the most advantageous position of all the slave states. In effect, they abolished slavery. On the contrary, Oney Garrison said in response. We abolished niggers.”

This quote displays the genocidal racial system that has been erected in North Carolina, and the strategic use of poor European immigrants to secure white political and economic power. While the white establishment of the state has abolished slavery on paper, this does not mean, in any way, that they have emancipated Black people. Instead, they have abolished slavery as a way to rid their society of Black people and install an underclass of white people who will eventually be allowed to rise within the system and exercise a political voice, by virtue of their whiteness. 

“The park sustained them, the green harbor they preserved as the town extended itself outward […] Cora thought of her garden back on Randall, the plot she cherished. Now she saw it for the joke it was—a tiny square of dirt that had convinced her she owned something. It was hers like the cotton she seeded, weeded, and picked was hers. Her plot was a shadow of something that lived elsewhere, out of sight. The way poor Michael reciting the Declaration of Independence was an echo of something that existed elsewhere. Now that she had run away and seen a bit of the country, Cora wasn’t sure the document described anything real at all. America was a ghost in the darkness, like her.” 

The town’s center is the park. It is where its people gather every Friday to degrade Black people through minstrel shows, and climaxes with the public lynching of a Black person. It is this park that “sustains” the white population. Through this depiction, Whitehead asserts that this white population is literally nourished through the practice of genocide and violence against Black people. This constant, ritualized practice is the backbone of their society and the basis of their unity. In contrast (but in perfect keeping with the racial logic of both North Carolina and America at large), Cora is completely dispossessed, imprisoned, and violated. 

“Ethel thought it would be spiritually fulfilling to serve the Lord in dark Africa, delivering savages to the light. She dreamed of the ship that would take her, a magnificent schooner with sails like angel wings, cutting across the violent sea. The perilous journey into the interior, up rivers, wending mountain passes, and the dangers escaped: lions, serpents, man-killing plants, duplicitous guides. And then the village, where the natives receive her as an emissary of the Lord, an instrument of civilization. In gratitude the niggers lift her to the sky, praising her name: Ethel, Ethel.” 

Whitehead depicts the airbrushed contours of Ethel’s white savior fantasy. Buffeted by the propagandistic accounts of Africa and the Black savage, Ethel harbors a highly fetishized, racist fantasy of “saving” the fallen and subhuman people, who are merely pawns psychologically designed to flatter and bolster her sense of her own goodness, righteousness, and moral purity. Through this quote, we see a definition of white identity that is wholly dependent upon defining itself against the racial Other. While Black people are "savages," white people are civilizers. This quote is therefore an iteration of one of Whitehead’s central themes: that white supremacy is in a constant state of making and expressing itself through the use of Black bodies to define itself against. 

“‘My father liked his Indian talk about the Great Spirit,’ Ridgeway said. ‘All these years later, I prefer the American spirit the one that called us from the Old World to the New, to conquer and build and civilize. And destroy that what needs to be destroyed. To lift up the lesser races. If not lift up, subjugate. And if not subjugate, exterminate. Our destiny by divine prescription—the American imperative.’”

In this quote, Whitehead indicts America. In contrast to the prevailing notions of America as a beacon of hope and justice, Ridgeway is honest and proud about the viciously predatory white supremacist ideology that is the actual basis of American identity and social organization. 

“The third man waved a bowie knife. His body shook with nerves, his quick breathing the night sound between his companion’s talk. Cora recognized his bearing. It was that of a runaway, one unsure of the latest turn in the escape. She’d seen it in Caesar, in the bodies of the new arrivals to the dormitories, and knew she’d exhibited it many times. He extended the trembling knife in Homer’s direction.” 

Cora observes Justin, the runaway whom Royal and Red have rescued. She demonstrates her intimate knowledge of both herself and her fellow runaways, who carry the trauma of their enslavement and the crushing fear that accompanies their attempts at escape deep in their bodies. 

“Everything on Valentine was the opposite. Work needn’t be suffering, it could unite folks. A bright child like Chester might thrive and prosper, as Molly and her friends did. A mother raise her daughter with love and kindness. A beautiful soul like Caesar could be anything he wanted here, all of them could be: own a spread, be a schoolteacher, fight for colored rights. Even be a poet. In her Georgia misery she had pictured freedom, and it had not looked like this. Freedom was a community laboring for something lovely and rare.” 

This quote displays the miracle of Valentine farm. Within it, Cora witnesses a nurturing and burgeoning of Black life that she has never encountered before. The simple ability to be free, forging human and familial intimacy and connection, has always been violently withheld from Black people. This quote shines with loss and poignancy, given the violent massacre that soon befalls the farm. White society cannot allow the notion of Black life, autonomy, and freedom.