His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad [Hardcover]

John Parker (Author), Stuart Seely Sprague (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1996

This is an autobiographical account of how John Parker risked his life to escape from slavery, and then became a fervent abolitionist, working on a border railroad where hundreds of runaway slaves were helped to freedom. At the age of eight Parker was forced from his family and sold. He tried to escape but was found by his master, then sold again. With much difficulty he earned his way out of slavery, and moved to Ripley, Ohio, a "station" on the Underground Railroad, a conduit to freedom which spirited runaway slaves to a new life, usually across the Canadian border. This tale of Parker's adventures describes his personal battle against slavery, recorded in his own words.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

John Parker was born a slave in Virginia but managed to buy his freedom. He hated the injustice of slavery, and so for about 20 years before the Civil War devoted his life to the dangerous work of helping other blacks escape to freedom. This is one of only a few accounts of a black American's fight against slavery in his own words. Unpublished for nearly a century, it brings to life the American frontier of the mid-18th century in as thrilling a fashion as any John Ford film or historical novel.

From Publishers Weekly

This previously unpublished manuscript, resurrected from the Duke University Archive, tells a remarkable story. Parker's oral history, taken down by a journalist in the 1880s, provides a lively and indelible account of a man determined to escape slavery and to help others reach freedom. Parker's vigorous vernacular has echoes of Huckleberry Finn, but his tragicomic accounting of many death-defying episodes is freighted with truth and "an eternal hatred of the institution [of slavery]." Born in 1827 in Norfolk, Va., at eight Parker was sold and marched south in chains. He soon learned self-sufficiency and abhorrence of brutality. Though his master in Mobile, Ala., was kindly, Parker's apprenticeships put him in the path of cruel racists; indomitably, he began a series of escapes, all of which failed. He finally earned his freedom by working in an iron foundry; before moving north, he fought a white co-worker who stole an invention of his. In Ripley, Ohio, from 1845 to 1865, Parker, perpetually armed, helped smuggle slaves north. He persisted despite a $1000 bounty on his head, heartened by the courage and sacrifice most fugitives showed. Over the years he variously owned foundry and milling businesses in Ohio. He had six children, all of whom became educated and middle class. Parker died in 1900. Sprague teaches at Morehead State University in Kentucky. Photos not seen by PW. Film option to Tri-Star.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 165 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (November 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393039412
• ISBN-13: 978-0393039412
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #406,553 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing account of the Underground Railroad, June 17, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad (Paperback)

John Parker's autobiography is an engrossing and often surprising account of the activities of the Underground Railroad. Parker was born and lived as a slave until buying his freedom and moving to Ripley, Ohio. There he joined forces with Rev. John Rankin in helping slaves cross the Ohio River and escape to Canada. His account is lucid, swift-moving, rambunctious, and highly literate. He describes the Ohio River Valley as "the Borderland," comparing it to the lawless, violent Scots/English border. The border, constantly raided by Abolitionists helping steal men, women, and children out of slavery and patrolled by slave-owning vigilantes intent on catching them, simmers in as treacherous a state of unrest and violence as any "Wild West" town at its worst. Parker never walks the streets of Ripley without a pistol, knife, and black jack in his belt. He never admits to working for the Underground Railroad, especially after passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, but pretty much everyone in the region knows that he does, putting his life in constant danger.

Parker's account abounds in hair-breadth escapes, heart-rending failures, and startling heroics. He also reveals aspects of the Underground Railroad that one never suspects but which seem inevitable after he describes them, such as the competition that developed between John Rankin's Ripley, Ohio branch of the Railroad and Levi Coffin's Cincinnati group. Parker insists that Coffin was merely the better publicist, not the better rescuer of the two. It's also clear that for Parker rescuing slaves was not merely a fierce moral imperative but also an activity touched with excitement, zest--even, strange as this sounds, fun. There is an element of sport to his activities, despite their grim, life and death seriousness. Parker is obviously bold, intelligent, crafty--good at what he does--and he relishes the hard-won triumphs of courage and guile that allow him to free his fellow slaves.

It's hard to say what place &qu! ot;His Promised Land" will take in American literature. It will not, I don't think, replace Frederick Douglass's "Narrative of an American Slave" as the country's premier account of the experience of slavery. It's not as powerful, relentless, or literarily self-conscious an account as Douglass's great work. But it may prove to be, for the Underground Railroad, what Sam Watkins's "Co. Aytch" is for the Civil War: perhaps the most engaging, colorful, and moving account by an 'ordinary extraordinary' man in one of this country's most agonizing and dramatic conflicts.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Outstanding Book, January 19, 2005

By 

Melinda Burnett "Springlering" (Atlanta) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad (Paperback)

I ordered this book after seeing an interesting reference to it in an article in Smithsonian Magazine. I am so very glad I did.It is an amazing book, a very rare combination of thought provoking historical narrative, and Indiana Jones-ish excitement. I only wish it had been ten times as long-I would have devoured it. If I hadn't read the preface, which gives the background, I would have thought it was fiction, and pretty darn nail biting fiction at that.
I have given quite a bit of thought to this book, wondering what I would have done, given the same situation, and concluded that you can only hope you would be strong enough to rise to the circumstances, but fear is a powerful deterrent.I am giving my copy to the history department chair at my daughters' high school, and will ask them to consider making it a part of the curriculum.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WOW!!!, September 9, 2002

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S. RAY-MATHIEU "Ms. Ray" (NY, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad (Paperback)

I brought this book some time ago and just got around to reading it. Well, let me tell you that I can kick myself for not reading it sooner. You will get through this book so fast your head would spin because it is so interesting you will not want to put it down. John P. Parker, my hero.