sylviasrevenge:rosasparks:lickystickypickyme:
A face of a woman who knows.
Full-length portrait of Araminta “Minty” Ross (better known as Harriet Tubman), seated in chair, facing front, probably at her home in Auburn, NY
1911.
New York City changes block by block, building by building; everywhere else in the Northeast (my only area of expertise) changes town by town, city by city, region by region. Auburn, about an hour west of Syracuse, used to be a center of the anti-slavery movement, a waystation—or even destination—on the underground railroad, and a home to abolitionists and their firebrand newspapers. It was, as it were, vital. Important. The site of socioeconomic change and discourse, the cutting edge of civil rights. Now it is a sleepy but lovely town, full of old buildings and a lovely lake and a state prison sitting right on the main drag, Route 5. How did that happen? Lots of reasons: the country got bigger, the cost of moving got cheaper, home construction got easier, and the curse of Central New York set in: anyone talented enough to make a difference would be crazy to stay. The locus shifted elsewhere. My dad, who wrote a book about Auburn resident Abner Doubleday (out soon!), is fond of pointing out how the shifting mass commercial transport options shaped the destiny of CNY’s cities: first the Erie Canal came through and towns built up around it, then the Thruway followed its path, but finally Interstate 81, running north-south from Canada down to Florida, found its way through Syracuse and Binghamton rather than Utica or Rochester, or Auburn, and the world started to pass it by. The people there now are good people, of a sort: parochial as hell, sure, but fairly laissez-faire compared to other places. Maybe that’s the small scrap that remains of whatever spirit animated the Auburn of Harriet Tugman and Abner Doubleday, a place that could honestly be described as a “hotbed.” Maybe that’s what becomes of passion: it inevitably fades to benign indifference.
