Man seeks to highlight Black history with hike through Frederick County
May 19—Ken Johnston, a "walking artist" based in Philadelphia, passed through Frederick County on Thursday and Friday, and will continue this weekend, to commemorate Black history in areas along the walk.
He is walking from Harpers Ferry to Gettysburg.
"This walk is reflecting on the African American communities in Harpers Ferry, Frederick, Catoctin Furnace, Hagerstown, [and] remembering those voices, today," Johnston said Friday.
His route and his conversations and activities along the way mix past with present and highlight how walking has been used as a form of social change, he said.
Johnston started the walk at the former Storer College in Harpers Ferry.
Storer was started in 1865, shortly after the Civil War started, to educate formerly enslaved people, according to the National Park Service. It closed in 1955.
From Harpers Ferry, Johnston said, he walked along the C&O Canal towpath to Brunswick.
The towpath is a well-documented Underground Railroad route, according to local historian Peter Michael of the Underground Railroad Free Press, which focuses on the history of the railroad.
Johnston took the African American Sites Walking Tour in downtown Frederick and will visit the Maryland Iron Festival, which is being held Saturday and Sunday at Catoctin Furnace.
"Not many cities or towns have [a] Black heritage trail mapped out. That tells me that community is recognizing its history," he said.
Johnston completed his first long-distance walk in 2017, a 200-plus-mile trek through Massachusetts, on the weekends, when he was bored at his desk job.
"I just felt my body calling out for movement, not the kind of movement you get when you just go to the gym," he said.
On that walk, he said, he thought of Harriet Tubman's words: "If you want a taste of freedom, keep going."
He later walked from Selma, Alabama, to Memphis, Tennessee, in 2018, then from Belfast to Derry in Northern Ireland in 2019 on a walk related to the Northern Ireland civil rights movement.
Johnston is a site supervisor at the Morris Arboretum & Gardens of the University of Pennsylvania.
Along his route in Frederick County, Johnston traveled from Brunswick to Jefferson through back roads and over what he called "monster hills," then along Md. 180 east to Frederick.
His route intentionally involves some zig-zagging, Johnston said. It reflects the pattern of movement Tubman had to conduct to avoid pursuers.
Tubman certainly would have taken zig-zag routes, particularly while in danger, Cheryl LaRoche, associate research professor at the University of Maryland and a history research consultant, said in an interview.
Johnston hopes to touch on that history with the visit to Cacoctin Furnace. Historic furnaces like that one were often sites where Black communities "facilitated freedom seekers going north," Johnston said.
LaRoche said she couldn't verify that location specifically, either. However, it's entirely possible iron foundries served as informal networks for people to escape being enslaved, she said.
Potentially, if one mapped old furnaces through Maryland and Pennsylvania, "and then overlay it with the routes everyone's talking about, they're gonna calibrate," she said, referring to Underground Railroad routes in the states.
The Frederick County area was geographically well suited to escaping enslavement for a few reasons, LaRoche added.
One is that it lacks a large body of water that would require a boat to cross. Another is the long, shared border with Pennsylvania, which abolished slavery in 1780.
The Cacoctin Furnace is home to what is considered one of the most complete African American cemeteries in the U.S., and was home to free and enslaved Black people, according to the Cacoctin Furnace Historical Society.
Johnston said that on his walks, he displays a sign on his backpack with the name of the walk and his website. He tries to talk with people along the way and connect with community organizations.
"You get a spectrum of responses," he said.
