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The Underground Railroad was a concept developed before the Civil War, during slavery where
abolitionists went into slave communities in the middle of the night and rescued slaves.
They went underground and took whatever they could to get people past the Mason Dixon line
to freedom. It was very powerful, very gutsy, and very risky and lives were at stake. There
are a number of people, particularly in Tennessee, and you ask people oh, you’re from Tennessee,
well no I’m really from Mississippi but I wound up in a nursing home in Tennessee,
so it’s not just Tennessee but a lot of people have wound up in nursing homes in Tennessee,
younger disabled people, institutionalized very early in life. The independent living
centers have said we can’t really help you. There isn’t enough in the way of resources,
particularly personal assistants to assist you to live independently. I think some of
them say go west young woman, go west young man, and there’s Colorado. I just got a
call today, there’s a guy who was in a nursing home. I think he had a spinal chord injury
and he wants to be a lawyer and he doesn’t have the resources. So, a friend of mine who
was part of that railroad who was just in Tennessee to speak at one of their annual
events, and he met this fellow. It’s terribly, terribly sad when someone has to leave their
family and friends to go a thousand miles to live in a community and a number of people
don’t know a soul here. It’s terribly sad because independent living is not a reality
for a significant segment of Americans with disabilities so people have to go to a Berkley,
go to a Denver to live independently. So it’s dubbed, the underground railroad is now…and
it’s interesting, I’d say the majority of the people in the underground railroad
are black and have wound up in nursing homes in real bad situations in Tennessee and elsewhere
in the deep south. Copyright 2010 It's Our Story LLC