The Traveler

Issue date: 2/22/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Irina Feofanova Students wait to participate in Gibson Hall's Sweet Chariot event Tuesday, which allowed them to imagine what it was like as slaves fleeing the South.

Residents of Gibson Hall Tuesday hosted Sweet Chariot, an interactive event that imagined guests as slaves fleeing the antebellum South.

"This event has been happening since 2003, and it won National Program of the Year for housing," said sophomore Liz Hughes, president of Gibson Hall.

"This year's program is different. We've added new rooms and new aspects, like using the resident director's apartment and the cellar. The goal is to show the escape to the North from the perspective of a slave and to make it very interactive," she said.

"The girls at Gibson have been working hard," said Hughes, a communications major. "We made quilt boards, painted signs, and transformed a lot of rooms. We have recruited four conductors, and we have an actor for every spot, so we've involved at least 20 people."

Hanna McCafferty, a pre-medical freshman, served as a conductor along the railroad and led groups of students and visitors around the residence hall.

"This is an event that is so neat because people get to learn a lot about this time in history," McCafferty said. "To me, it seems like fiction what these people had to go through, but it's something that I've really loved being a part of."

Upon entering Gibson, people were tied to each other and escorted by their conductor. Their first stop was in the house of a farmer to watch a film about the arduous trip up North for a slave.

"Quilt signs mean safe places for the slaves to rest," McCafferty said. She pointed to the quilt block on the door of the resident director's apartment, which doubled as the farmer's house.

Afterward, the "slaves" went outside and walked around, where they experienced the fear of capture during a brief chase from another volunteer, junior Johnny Biggs.

The slaves hid in the cellar of Gibson, literally crawling among the pipes, when McCafferty pointed to broken dishes, which "mean safety, a safe place for slaves to enter," she said.

Jason Biggs, a freshman economics major, hid the slaves in the cellar under Gibson.

"Hall Senators work together in this event, which commemorates Black History Month. So we're raising awareness about black history and the slave trade," said Biggs, who serves in Hall Senate at Humphrey's.

Continued...

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