Freedom takes on a special meaning

Students might have had the week off from school, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t learn anything during their vacation.

Twenty-two students in kindergarten through sixth grade participated in the Underground Railroad Freedom Quilts program at the Henry Waldinger Memorial Library on Feb. 22 as part of Black History Month.

The kids got an in-depth look at some of the tactics that slaves used to stay hidden once they escaped and searched for a safe place.

“If you had to sneak away from somewhere and nobody could know about it and you needed to get messages across to somebody, but without anybody else knowing, how would you do that?” children’s librarian Jaclyn Kunz asked her students. Kunz has worked at the library for four years and said there was a great response for the program as all the slots filled up days before the event.

“What the slaves would do, and people that were helping them along the way, was they would have quilts,” Kunz said to the group. “This was a way that slaves could send a message.”

Kunz pointed out the different types of symbols that could be sewn on quilts and said that each symbol has a different meeting. A Bear’s Paw symbol, Kunz said, tipped escaped slaves off by letting them know to use the path of a bear.

“Say you’re on you journey, you’re going along and you see this hanging outside of somebody’s house,” Kunz said. “No one would really know anything other than it was a blanket. But the slaves that were escaping knew that this meant that it’s not safe to walk along the regular roads, you have to stay throughout the woods, you have to use the paths a bear would use.”

The kids then got the chance to make their own Underground Railroad Freedom Quilts, although the ones created at the library were made out of paper.

Fasih Khan attends Clear Stream Avenue School and said he colored the Wagon Wheel design. The Wagon Wheel told slaves to think about what essentials they needed to survive their trip. “I learned that there are different quilts for different reasons and the meanings for them,” Khan said.

Marjorie Hilaire, a third grader at Holy Name of Mary School, said she liked coloring the quilts any color she wanted and attends events at the library often.

After each student colored their own freedom quilt, Kunz placed them together on a board that is currently on display at the Waldinger library. “I wanted to do something where everybody could come together and piece something together to make one larger thing that we could display,” Kunz said.

Marcia Johnson was in town for the week from Toledo, Ohio visiting family. She took her two grandchildren, Olivia and Cole, to Waldinger and said, “It was wonderful to see” them have fun during the program.

Kunz also showed a brief video on the subject to engage the students. “I try to do something where they can hear something, see something, make something,” Kunz said. “I try to do a whole bunch of different things so they can get a multisensory experience.”

Waldinger hosts programs for students throughout the year and Kunz said she sees a lot of familiar faces at her events. “I think that it’s great for them to come out because they get to see kids from other schools that they don’t normally get to interact with and meet people from all different backgrounds,” she said. “I know a lot of the kids because they come in regularly so it’s like a family.”