7,862
edits
Underground Railroad: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
HLIAA14YOG (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
|||
| (12 intermediate revisions by 3 users not shown) | |||
Line 15:
== [[Literature]] ==
* The original ''Underground Railroad'' led from the United States and slavery to Canada (or other British and foreign territories) and freedom. In much of its heyday, which started with the British Empire's abolition of slavery in 1843 and largely ended with the US [[Civil War]] in 1861, freedom seekers who'd reached abolitionist Northern states were still not safe as they risked abduction and recapture by slave catchers. Only a few brave souls like [[Harriet Tubman]] risked going behind the lines to transport slaves from southern border states; the bulk of the infrastructure served the onward travel of those already in free states but still at risk of recapture. Books and newspapers were the most effective (or, at least, most lasting) media for abolitionists to advance their beliefs and preserve the history after the Moses-like exodus to the promised land in the north waned.
** ''[[Uncle Tom's Cabin]]'' by Harriet Beecher Stowe was an influential contemporary work in the cause against slavery, as was [[Mark Twain|Samuel Clemens']] ''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]''.
** ''The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom: A comprehensive history'' (1898) by [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49038 Wilbur Henry Siebert] (1866-1961) was an extensive description of the Underground Railroad across the US northeast, written a few decades after it was all over.
* In ''[[The Handmaid's Tale]]'', there was an underground railroad for getting people (mostly women, IIRC) from Gilead to Canada.
* ''[[Number the Stars]]'' is a work of historical fiction set during [[World War II]], about the [[Real Life]] efforts by Danes in Nazi occupied Denmark to smuggle Jews into neutral Sweden.
Line 24 ⟶ 27:
** Later on, other operations develop to help {{spoiler|Narn civilians}} escape captivity after their star nation falls under a brutal occupation by {{spoiler|The Centauri Republic.}} One of the notables in this movement is {{spoiler|Vir Cotto, using his credentials as Londo's aide and later Ambassador to Minbar}} under the name "Abrahamo Lincolni".
** And the Telepath Underground Railroad is used again later on as {{spoiler|a recruiting network for telepaths to help the [[The Alliance|Army of Light]] fight the Shadows.}}
* In ''[[Firefly (TV series)|Firefly]]'' and ''[[Serenity]]'', Simon was helped in his rescue of his sister from a government lab by some unspecified co-conspirators who apparently are these.
* In ''[[Hogan's Heroes]]'', the title characters and the French Resistance helped escaping Allied P.O.W.s reach England.
* ''[[Murder, She Wrote]]'': Investigating a murder attributed to the slave of a distant relative, Mrs. Fletcher found that the victim was a "Station Master" on the Underground Railroad, and was murdered by his father-in-law.
Line 32 ⟶ 35:
* ''[[Shadowrun]]'' supplement ''Aztlan''. The Aztlan Freedom League helps refugees from Aztlan escape to the Confederated American States.
* Fantasy Games Unlimited's ''Psi World'' adventure ''Underground Railroad''. The Free State operates, with the aid of a psionic underground in the Confederacy, a series of escape routes for psis who wish to get out of the repressive police state of the Confederacy.
* ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' has a few, especially in Calimshan. And (less often) [https://web.archive.org/web/20161101074717/http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=fr
== [[Video Games]] ==
Line 42 ⟶ 45:
== [[Real Life]] ==
* The [[Trope Namer]] is the Underground Railroad that existed in the United States before the [[American Civil War]], which helped escaped slaves make their way north to safety. Some found refuge in the Northern states that were anti-slavery, but some ended up fleeing all the way to Canada to avoid slave extradition laws that required escaped slaves to be arrested and returned to their owners.
** Less well-known is that, for over a half-century after some Northern states went anti-slavery (beginning with Vermont in 1777) and before the British Empire outlawed slavery in 1833, the Underground Railroad ran south from Canada to the USA.
* During [[World War II]], airmen from the Allied Powers who were shot down over Occupied Europe would often find themselves being hidden and protected by members of various [[La Résistance|resistance groups]], who would try to smuggle them back to England or to a neutral country such as Switzerland or Sweden.
** Counter-intuitively, the easiest path back to England was ''not'' across the English Channel, but rather a lengthy and difficult trip through Occupied France, Vichy France, and neutral Spain to the Mediterranean, due to the density of German defenses and patrols along the French coastline.
* In 2017, hundreds if not thousands of refugee claimants covertly (and eventually overtly) crossed the US-Canada border after [[Donald Trump]] repeatedly commented on his intentions to remove various non-citizens from the country. ''[[The New Yorker]]'' called this "[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/the-underground-railroad-for-refugees The Underground Railroad for Refugees]". For many of these refugees, especially those whose refugee claims had already been denied by the USA, [[Defied Trope|it didn't work]]; crossing the border illegally was enough for them to be deported from Canada.
* And then there's the "[https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/canada-chechnya-gay-asylum/article36145997/ Rainbow Railroad]", bringing homosexuals from countries where they face imprisonment or worse simply for being non-heterosexual to countries with freedom of sexual orientation.
{{reflist}}
| |||