Page 22 - MACC Guide 2019/2020

MADISON, INDIANA’S Blacks reached freedom because of as a freedom fighter, challenged
FIRST COMMUNITY FOR Georgetown.” an Indiana act “concerning free
FREE BLACKS negroes, mulattos, servants, and
Since Georgetown was the epicenter slaves”. The act required all Blacks
While many communities for the Underground Railroad entering the state after September
throughout Indiana had Black in Madison, many Underground 1, 1831, to pay a $500 bond to the
settlements before the Civil War and Railroad leaders lived in state of Indiana. Today, that bond
the Emancipation, Madison, Indiana Georgetown or were associated with would be equivalent to over $14,000.
had a whole district of prominent the area. The community of free DeBaptiste challenged that law
Black residents that can still be Blacks helped hundreds of slaves and while he won on a technicality,
visited today. escape to freedom. the constitutionality of the act
was upheld. Today, a monument
The Georgetown Neighborhood “At that time, Georgetown was about the Underground Railroad
was home to freed slaves and mostly inhabited by a good class of in Detroit, Michigan features
Black indentured servants during colored people, who lived from the DeBaptiste’s image.
the 1820s. A few white families north side of the alley to the Miller
lived in the neighborhood, which alley, along both sides of the street. Life for the residents of Georgetown
consisted of its own organizations; The colored people I refer to were was not easy. Free Blacks were
churches; and schools, but a number industrious and worthy citizens, all persistently harassed, they
of Georgetown businesses were owning their own homes and were constantly dealt with discrimination
primarily owned and operated by highly respected by the better class on every level of society, and feared
free Blacks living in the community. of white people,” Mary C. Johnson kidnapping. Many people in and
wrote in a letter to the editor in The around Madison, and throughout
Georgetown was also a Madison Courier in 1916. the North, held a pro-slavery, racist
neighborhood active in the view of the world.
Underground Railroad and was Those living on the northern
the target of pro-slavery mobs who border of the Ohio River worked to Even many people who considered
attempted to destroy the community. create an environment to not only themselves anti-slavery did not
camouflage fugitive slaves, but to want to live side-by-side with free
“It’s a major part of Madison’s push the boundaries instituted by Black Americans. The American
history,” said Sue Livers, a board state and federal governments on Colonization Society, founded in
member of the African American the rights to free Black individuals 1816, pressured free Blacks to go to a
Landmarks Committee and Historic living in the North. West African country called Liberia
Madison Inc, who did early research to settle even though most had been
on Georgetown. “This is one of the A prime example, George in the United States for generations.
areas that is well-preserved and DeBaptiste, a Georgetown resident
intact; it played an important role in who would go on to achieve According to Census records,
the Underground Railroad. So many national prominence in Detroit free Blacks settled in Madison’s

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