The Underground Railroad: Colson Whitehead

• The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead, was published by Doubleday as a first edition in 2016.
• The book has 320 pages, and sells for $15.41
• The ISBN13 is 978-0385542364
• The ISBN-10 is 0385542364
• The book is fictionally interpreted, though keeping with recorded history, where the Underground Railroad was an organized network, but not a literal railroad.

Plot and Key Entities

• The novel transforms the metaphorical Underground Railroad into a concrete reality.
• Tracks are laid through man-made tunnels beneath the earth, connecting states in an endless maze.
• Trains, often rusty boxcars, travel these tracks, sometimes featuring a shining carriage.
• Ridgeway is portrayed as zealous and serves as a megaphone for racism, articulating chilling thoughts.
• Cora Randall is the story's heroine, fleeing a Georgia plantation.

Racism and Slavery

• Racist beliefs and the booming cotton trade perpetuate the transatlantic slave trade.
• Ridgeway's blacksmith father made tools, and the son retrieves them, alluding to the torture of Africans.
• The novel is a museum of the objectification of humans by powerful men.
• The author exposes the degradation of the souls of slave-masters and the toll that slavery takes.
• North Carolina shows the white American reactions, where they hired German and Irish migrants to replace slaves, whom they expelled from North Carolina under new racial laws.

Civil Rights and Freedom

• The road to freedom emerges with the operations of the Underground Railroad.
• Anti-slavery meetings connected to the UR take place in the northern states.
• “I oil the pistons” is code for the Railroad.
• Valentine Farm is a fugitive sanctuary with luminaries who stir the blood of negro residents.
• Freedom will rise from men and women like Cora and Royal.
• The novel shows the importance of ‘making room for others'.

Racial Division

• Donald Trump's 2016 victory and ‘white-lash’ show the racial divisions.
• The Birther Movement questioned President Obama's citizenship.
• The Black Lives Matter movement started in 2013, protesting the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin. This movement mirrors aspects of the Underground Railroad with grit and determination.

Equal Justice

• Bryan Stevenson is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative.
• He calls for America's accountability and believes in racial justice.
• Stevenson highlights the narrative of racial difference and the need to confront it and says they are living in a post-genocidal society.
• He highlights what Germany did to face the Holocaust and says The US should be the same when it comes to slavery.
• The US romanticizes the confederacy and that should be challenged to become a more accepting society.
• Stevenson says that the US does success well but doesn't own up to their mistakes.
• He calls for a nation that chooses repentance and renewal to build a world that works for all.

A summary of Colson Whitehead's 'The Underground Railroad', published in 2016. The novel transforms the metaphorical Underground Railroad into a concrete reality. Cora Randall is the story's heroine, fleeing a Georgia plantation. The book explores themes of racism and slavery.