大学英语综合教程 第三册 2textA

[00:00.00]In 2004 a center in honor of the "underground railroad" opens in Cincinnati.The railroad was unususl.
[00:09.25]It sold no tickets and had no trains.Yet it carried thousands of passengers to the destination of their dreams.
[00:18.68]THE FREEDOM GIVERS’              By   Ferqus M. Bordewich
[00:24.53]A gentle breeze swept the Canadian plains as I stepped outside the small two-story house.
[00:32.78]Alongside me was a slender woman in a black dress,my guide back to a time when the surrounding settlement in Dresden,
[00:43.36]Ontario,was home to a hero in American history.As we walked toward a plain gray church.
[00:52.48]Barbara Carter spoken proudly of her great-great-grand-father,Josiah Henson.
[01:00.45]"He was confident that the Creator intended all men to be created equal.And he never gave up struggling for that freedom."
[01:10.69]2 Carter's devotion to her ancestor is about more than personal pride:it is about family honor.
[01:20.43]For Josiah Henson has lived on through the character in American fiction that he helped inspire:Uncle Tom,
[01:30.51]the long-suffering slave in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.
[01:36.73]Ironically,that character has come to symbolize everything Henson was not.A racial sell out unwilling to stand up for himself?
[01:47.81]Carter gets angry at the thought."Josiah Henson was a man of principle,"she said firmly.
[01:56.22]3I had traveled here to Henson's last home-now a historic site that Carter formerly directed-to learn more about a man who was,
[02:08.08]in many ways an African-American Moses.After winning his own freedom from slavery,
[02:16.15]Henson secretly helped hundreds of other slaves to escape north to Canada--and liberty.Many settled here in Dresden with him.
[02:27.64]4 Yet this stop was only part of a much larger mission for me.
[02:33.84]Josiah Henson is but one name on a long list of courageous men and women who together forged the Underground Railroad,
[02:44.47]a secret web of escape routes and safe houses that they used to liberate slaves from the American South.
[02:53.48]Between1820 and1860,as many as100,000 slaves traveled the Railroad to freedom.
[03:03.22]5 In October 2000, President Clinton authorized$16 million for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
[03:14.43]to honor this first great civil-rights struggle in the U.S.The center is scheduled to open in 2004 in Cincinnati.And it's about time.
[03:27.60]For the heroes of the Underground Railroad remain too little remembered,their exploits still largely unsung.
[03:37.50]I was intent on telling their stories.
[03:41.91]6 John Parker tensed when he heard the soft knock.Peering out his door into the night,
[03:49.49]he recognized the face of a trusted neighbor."There's a party of escaped slaves hiding in the woods in Kentucky,
[03:58.42]twenty miles from the river,"the man whispered urgently.
[04:03.28]Parker didn't hesitate."I'll go,"he said,pushing a pair of pistols into his pockets.
[04:11.61]7 Born a slave two decades before,in the 1820s,
[04:17.23]Parker had been taken from his mother at age eight and forced to walk in chains from Virginia to Alabama,
[04:26.37]where he was sold on the slave market.Determined to live free someday,he managed to get trained in iron molding.
[04:36.22]Eventually he saved enough money working at this trade on the side to buy his freedom.Now,by day,
[04:45.60]Parker worked in an iron foundry in the Ohio port of Ripley.By night he was a"conductor" on the Underground Railroad,
[04:57.35]helping people slip by the slave hunters.In Kentucky,where he was now headed,
[05:05.16]there was a$1000 reward for his capture,dead or alive.
[05:11.25]8 Crossing the Ohio River on that chilly night,Parker found ten fugitives frozen with fear."Get your bundles and follow me,
[05:22.17]" he told them,leading the eight men and two women toward the river.
[05:28.05]They had almost reached shore when a watchman spotted them and raced off to spread the news.