“It is said the Buxton Liberty Bell was rang each time a fugitive reached safety in Buxton,” a 9,000-acre early Black settlement in Ontario, Canada. The church bell was presented to Buxton by a group of black Pittsburgh residents. Originally placed in the steeple of St. Andrew’s Church, its ringing became a
regular part of the settlers’ lives.
Coming from Philadelphia, home of another Liberty Bell, so named by abolitionists, where many Freedom Seekers passed through, journeying along the Underground Railroad, on their way to Canada during the Antebellum period (1830-1865) in the U.S., symbolically ringing the Buxton Liberty Bell brought up many feelings in me.
One emotional feeling I was reminded of ringing the bell, was the moment I crossed the Niagara Falls Rainbow Bridge in September 2022, and turning around to look back at the 700-miles of invisible footsteps which only I could see, and all the memories that accompanied me like baggage on the long five-year journey from Maryland’s Eastern Shore, to the moment and place our ancestors were free from the reach of U.S. laws. Another feeling I had as I pulled on the bell handle and it clanged once, twice, three times was remembering the ancestors who didn’t make it out of slavery and dreamed of freedom every waking moment of their lives. I arrived in their memory.
And most profoundly, it was my own personal moment of Freedom I celebrated with tears of joy and happiness. As I look at the video clip below ringing the bell and reflect, I imagine a time in the 1850s Elgin Settlement, as African Canadians passed up and down street looking on and welcoming me as I stand next to the bell, followed by questions on where I was from and if I knew someone who is believed to have escaped to Philadelphia. Buxton is a safe, welcoming place where the feeling of home is so tangible you can feel it in the air and upon the land when you look out into the flat fields.