five minutes from freedom

five minutes from freedom

fiction
edward w pritchard

Usually a hazy swirl surrounds our recollections of the past. But to this day I can vividly remember the slave auction house there on tenth street in Wheeling Wv one rainy Tuesday afternoon at 2 o'clock in the afternoon back in 1859. My Mother's great-grand Mother rode in a wagon by the large auction house building as a little girl and her Mother ordered her to close her eyes so she couldn't see
the chained slaves waiting to be taken to be sold.

Of course my Mother's relatives were too poor to own slaves but by circumstances they found themselves in a slave owning country.

To this day I recall my Mother's great grandmother thinking as she peeked at the chained slaves back in 1859 that they were only five minutes from freedom. Up over the roof of the slave auction building on tenth street in Wheeling Wv and ten miles North across  the River to Martin's Ferry Ohio and a colored person could be free.