Issue 825 Thursday, February 28, 2013

Supported by readers of the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News

An Underground Railroad Trip, Pages 2 and 3.

Learning Lincoln, Pages 4 and 5.

LEGENDS AND LEADERS

MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM

February is almost over so, make way for a busy March.

The first weekend of March is full of activity.

Spectators can watch Wayne County’s top spellers compete on Saturday at the Charles H. Wright Museum. The winner will go on to represent our region at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. this spring.

How do you spell competition for canines? It’s the Detroit Kennel Club Dog Shows on Saturday and Sunday. See Page 6 for news on a top dog!

Or you might want to take a field trip and make a stop on the Underground Railroad. Learn some living history lessons on Page 2 and Page 3.

Speaking of history, with Presidents’ Day just last week, and the birthday of President Abraham Lincoln this month, it’s worth brushing up on some Lincoln learning, too. See our story on Pages 4 and 5.

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Printed by: The Detroit Media Partnership Sterling Heights, Michigan, Winter 2013.

• More Detroit love, Page 7.• My Kid Scoop, Page 8.

On the cover:

Also Inside:

Yak Chat

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Aniya Robertson, 8, is dressed in character for a living history lesson.Photo by Patricia Chargot

Those of us who love to read often reread our favorite books. The Yak feels the same way about the Underground Railroad, the secret

network of escape routes that helped thousands of African Americans reach freedom in the 19th Century. He loves revisiting the many Michigan historic sites and museum exhibits that bring the story to life.

So Happy Birthday to the First Congregational Church of Detroit’s “Flight to Freedom” tour, which is in the 122-year-old church’s basement. The simulated Underground Railroad experience, which will be 10 years old this year, surely must be one of the most unique in the nation.

“We’ve had grown people come down here and just stand and start to cry,” said Fred Payne, one of the many costumed reenactors we met when we revisited “Flight to Freedom” last month – for the first time since 2003. Fred was playing Junebug, a plantation carpenter who can’t seek freedom because his wife is afraid to leave. “But I play other parts – I’m a

conductor, too,” Fred said.(Conductors helped guide those who

escaped from slavery on their long journey to freedom. Do you know the name of the Underground Railroad’s most famous conductor? See answer and Page 3.)

As impressed as we were by the tour when it was first created, it has gotten even better over time. Then, the volunteer actors played their parts well, but now they are absolutely convincing. The pretend journey from a sugar cane plantation in Louisiana to Detroit and finally, to freedom in Ontario, felt scary in 2003. But the trip was even scarier this time, especially after we got separated from our conductor at Granny Franny’s cabin! We stayed to talk with Granny for too long and the conductor and the 13 other adults and kids in his tour group moved on – and were gone. Granny, who was played by Linda Johnson, had to take my hand and lead me through the dark woods to Junebug’s workshop.

We were sorry to leave Linda because she,

Photos by Patricia ChargotAt left, Donna Dozier plays a conductor on the Underground Railroad in “Flight to Freedom.” Her granddaughter, Aniya Robertson, 8, plays a plantation girl and sings.

Fred Payne plays Junebug so convincingly it’s hard to believe he’s not really a plantation carpenter. He’s a retired Detroit plant worker.

Getting Lost and Found in a Living History Lesson

FIELD TRIP

MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM Thursday, February 28, 2013 3

too, played her role well. Granny Franny is a slave who is too old to make the journey to freedom. But she does what she can to encourage others on their journey.

“My peoples, you all looks good,” she told our tour group. “I know you’ve got a long way to go, but you’re going to make it to freedom…

“You all are going to become a family on this journey. You’re going to teach each other your gifts. I’m going to say a blessing: ‘Lord, watch over my peoples, Lord.’ ”

There are no scripts. The actors improvise their lines, based on research they’ve done, which makes their performances even more authentic. One of the most convincing characters barely speaks at all. Called simply, “the old man at the river,” he seemed like a statue when we first saw him sitting alone in the dark – he was that quiet and still. “He just stays back in the woods and keeps an eye out,”

Fred explained. “When he sees people, he tells them to take the bridge because it’s safer to go that way.” The transformed basement “isn’t a haunted house, but it’s a serious experience,” he said.

Visitors are encouraged to imagine themselves as escaping slaves – by the actors, the stone walls, dirt floors, pretend swamps, simulated cricket sounds, safe houses – and best of all something that didn’t exist in 2003. Then, the journey ended at a dock at “Midnight” – railroad code word for Detroit. A tarp on the floor represented the Detroit River, but it was dull and unbelievable. Now, the area beyond the dock – once the church gym – moves and sparkles, like real river water.

“In 2006 and 2007, we sealed off the gym windows, added stars on the ceiling and lights that look like water,” said Yolanda Ware-Uddin, a church spokeswoman. The effects are mesmerizing. Visitors board a wooden raft “floating” in the optical illusion of the river and “ride” to Ontario and freedom. There, they can either ride an elevator to the first floor exit or run up a long staircase while shouting, “Freedom!”

Adults tend to take the elevator, kids the stairs. Desmon Beauregard, 12, was an exuberant runner. Freedom! Freedom!” yelled the sixth-grader at Nataki Talibah Schoolhouse in Detroit. Later, he described the experience as “pretty cool.”

There was one thing about the original tour that we missed. In 2003, kids had acting parts, too. We interviewed four for our first story. Now there is only one, Aniya Robertson, 8, a third grader at Plymouth Educational Center in Detroit. Her grandmother, Donna Dozier, plays a conductor, and Aniya occasionally accompanies her to the church to help.

On the Saturday we visited, Aniya belted out “Go Down, Moses,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Wade in the Water” with the force and talent of an “American Idol” winner. Her contribution to the experience was major.

The Yak hopes to see more kids lend their acting and singing talents to the tour.

By Patricia Chargot

The church is at 33 E. Forest at Woodward Avenue, in the cultural center. Reservations for the tour are a must. For more, visit www.friendsoffirst.com or call 313-831-4080.

Answer: Harriet Tubman was the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad. Born into slavery in Maryland, her courage and determination are legendary. Over ten years, she helped hundreds of slaves reach freedom. Photos by Patricia Chargot

Aniya Robertson, 8, is dressed in character and stands at the dock, waiting to cross a pretend Detroit River to freedom in Ontario.

Granny Franny, played by Linda Johnson, led the Yak through a dark woods after he lost his tour group.

Most Yak’s Corner readers celebrated Presidents’ Day with a day off from school – in fact,

Detroit Public School students had the entire week off for a mid-winter break. While you were relaxing, the Yak thought it would be a perfect time to learn more about one of our greatest and most popular presidents – Abraham Lincoln.

President Lincoln is having a big year – from the 150th anniversary of

the Emancipation Proclamation to a movie about his final months, called “Lincoln,” which led the Oscar nominations, people seem especially interested in our sixteenth president. To help us with our Lincoln learning, we turned to expert and scholar James M. Cornelius,

the curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.

Q: Do you have any favorite facts or stories about President Lincoln you especially like to share with young readers?

A: “As far as we know, he never owned a pair of shoes – he was a barefoot boy, and then wore boots, like a working man, his whole life. For lunch as president he often had only a glass of milk and an apple. He could not sing or carry a tune at all, but he wrote pretty good poems for an amateur – he had a good ear for rhyme and meter. He could do a LOT of math in his head, from his days as a young store clerk. He left his last four paychecks uncashed; found in his desk. (Lincoln) did not care about money. He cried in public more than most men now – at war losses, certainly over

his two boys’ deaths, but also at the deaths of some friends’ kids.”

Q: President Lincoln was known to use humor and stories to make his point. Can you share an example?

A: “Here’s one: ‘Think about a dog. If you call its tail a leg, how many legs does the dog have?’ Everyone answers ‘five.’ ‘No,’ says Lincoln with a laugh. ‘CALLING a tail a leg don’t make it so. And thus CALLING the slaves free did not make it so.’ He knew that people changed slowly, and that we would have to ‘live out our differences’ with one another. Once he said he thought this could take about 100 years. He proved to be about right, if you consider the civil rights legislation of the 1960s.”

Q: What made President Lincoln a strong leader?

A: “Lincoln grew up amongst Kentuckians, very few of whom were anti-slavery, though we think that his parents were. When he settled on his own at New Salem, Illinois, in 1831 at age 22, he was in the biggest town he had ever lived in – almost 300 people! – and many of them were from the North, including some anti-slavery people. So he began to learn to get along with all kinds of people. Becoming a lawyer helped him solve the small and large problems that people in any town or region have with one another. In 1858 through his death in 1865, he publicly spoke out against the spread of slavery to new territories, because he had always opposed slavery.

‘If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think, and feel,’ he wrote in 1864. As president, though, he knew that he did not have the right to interfere with state constitutions that allowed slavery. But he kept to his core beliefs, and the wartime … gave him new rights as president. That is, as Commander in Chief, he could order certain things that a peacetime president cannot…’’

Visit the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum at http://alplm.org/

Thursday, February 28, 20134 MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM

Courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum, Springfield, Illinois

This 1868 chromolithograph (or color print) by the Louis Prang Company of Boston shows an imagined scene from Lincoln’s boyhood. The fireside of the family’s Indiana log cabin is where he got most of his education. Expert James M. Cornelius explained, “his family and neighbors knew about his dedication to teaching himself.”

LEARNING ABOUT LINCOLN

Curator James M. Cornelius

James M. Cornelius loves his job as the curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential

Library and Museum and it’s a job that seems like he was destined to land. As a boy growing up in Minneapolis, the curator says his favorite classes were social studies and history. He loved memorizing all the presidents and their dates in office. “At one time, I could name off all the vice presidents, too,” he says, although he’s not sure he could recite them all now. He also memorized all the state capitals, and other history and geography facts.

Need more proof? “As a little kid, I collected Lincoln pennies. I just loved looking at those, and I still have my set,” says Cornelius. “I have every one of them, except for the one that costs $1,000 today.” Plus, he has an ancestor that fought in the Civil War for the First New York Engineers. “It’s also worth pointing out that I don’t have any ancestors that fought for the Confederacy, but I do have ancestors who did not like Mr. Lincoln’s policies, that were Democrats in the North,” he says.

Today, the curator gets to share his love of history – and facts about his favorite president – with museum visitors and

others looking for an expert on the 16th president. He even shared his knowledge with some of the moviemakers when they were researching Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln.” Even actor Daniel Day-Lewis visited the museum along with author and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and the movie’s co-producer Kathleen Kennedy.

They took a tour along with everyone else, but also got to “look into our vault to see the 13th Amendment itself and the Emancipation Proclamation, we have a signed copy of it, and also the Gettysburg Address, so that was his inspiration, with real historical artifacts.” Later, he worked with set and costume designers to provide historic details, especially on the president’s office, and the way President Lincoln dressed, walked and even carried his famous hat.

By Janis Campbell

WISE WORDSTwo terrific picture book biographies

share the story of our 16th president, focusing on his wise and eloquent words.

“What Lincoln Said,” by Sarah L. Thomson with art by James E. Ransome, published by HarperCollins Publishers, incorporates some of Abraham Lincoln’s own words into a story that spans from his life as a farm boy to the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

“Abe’s Honest Words: The Life of Abraham Lincoln” by Doreen Rappaport, with illustrations by Kadir Nelson, published by Hyperion Books For Children, also shares the president’s life story sprinkled with his famous words. On the subject of education, Lincoln, a mostly self-taught learner says, “Upon the subject of education, I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.”

5MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM Thursday, February 28, 2013

Courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum, Springfield, Illinois

George H. Story painted this oil portrait of President Lincoln in 1915. It shows the “storm clouds of war” overhead, and the U.S. Capitol building at the back.

FROM PENNY COLLECTOR TO LINCOLN EXPERT

AP PhotoPresident Barack Obama was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts using the same Bible used by President Abraham Lincoln. He used the Lincoln Bible for both his first and second term swearing-in ceremonies.

President Barack Obama used President Lincoln’s swearing-in Bible in both of his inaugurations. Presidential expert James M. Cornelius says that Bible wasn’t

actually President Lincoln’s personal Bible, but one that was bought at a local bookstore for the inaugural ceremony. His own Bible was still in transit, or being moved to Washington D.C., at the time of the ceremony.

The Emancipation Proclamation was signed on January 1, 1863. In April of 1864, the U.S. Senate passed the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.

President Lincoln was one fit leader. James M. Cornelius said, “When President Lincoln died, the doctors said that he had more muscle than about anyone they had

ever seen. He could hold an 8-pound axe out from his body at arm’s length without wiggling – try that with a gallon of milk or water, roughly the same weight, on the end of a 2-foot pole.” (The axe is on display at the museum.)

Space ShockOuter space news ruled in February. First, a meteor shocked

people in an area in the remote Ural Mountain region of Russia when it entered the Earth’s atmosphere and exploded in a fireball across the sky. The blast was so strong that it smashed windows, blew down some walls and caused more than 1,000 injuries in the city of Chelyabinsk. Schools closed after windows were blown out as it was very cold in the region (0 degrees and below!).

“The light was so intense that it completely illuminated the courtyard of our apartment block,” Sergei Zakharov, head of the Russian Geographical Society in Chelyabinsk told the Wall Street Journal. “No one could understand what had happened. I’d compare it to the explosion of a large flare bomb.” A meteor is a small piece of debris, or space rock, usually from an asteroid or comet. When and if the rock, or part of it, hits Earth, then it is called a meteorite.

(In a cosmic coincidence, or random occurrence, an asteroid passed close to the Earth on the same day – February 15. It passed 17,000 miles from Earth, which is closer than some satellites – the ones that give us television and cell phone signals are at 22,000 miles from Earth, explained ABC News. )

The holes left by meteorites can be huge – the Yak has visited the Barringer Meteorite Crater where he walked to the edge of the deep hole left thousands of years ago in Arizona. (Walking around this hole would be a six-mile hike.) Scientists called astrophysicists study space and hope to predict and learn more about these occurrences.

Top Dog! And now, some down-to-earth

news about dogs. The Westminster Kennel Club (WKC) Dog Show in New York City is one of the most important contests for show dogs. This year the winner was Banana Joe, an Affenpinscher. The dog’s home is in the Netherlands. The WKC website says that in France, the Affenpinscher is called Diabolotin Moustachu, which means “moustached little devil.” The WKC says the breed shows stamina, agility, and great courage.

Goals for U.S.President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address

this month laid out his goals and plans for the nation. Among the big goals he mentioned were gun control, troops returning from Afghanistan, better pay (raising the minimum wage to $9 an hour) and more jobs. To the Yak, another key point in his speech was about education. President Obama wants more aid for students paying for college. But he also stressed how important preschool is for kids. Since the speech, President Obama has begun visiting preschools. A good early education he said in the speech, means nobody “starts the race of life already behind.” Did you go to preschool? What do you think?

First Lady’s GuestIf you watched the State of the Union,

you probably saw First Lady Michelle Obama in her seat, surrounded by special guests. One of her guests was 12-year-old Haile Thomas. Haile, a sixth-grader in Tucson, Arizona, was one of the young chefs last year at the Kids State Dinner. She is featured now on the Let’s Move web site for her activities in Arizona for kids health and nutrition. She is Co-Founder/Director of the HAPPY Organization, and also started a club called the Healthy Girl Adventures Club to inspire girls to embrace healthy habits. She is cooking up a lot more activities, including a cookbook of her own. You can find her recipe for a quinoa, black bean salad at www.letsmove.gov.

Compiled by Cathy Collison

Yakking about the newsA weekly wrap-up for young readers

AP PhotoA meteor streaks through the sky over Russia.

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Photo Courtesy of Let’s MoveHaile Johnson

AP PhotoBanana Joe won Best of Show in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Want to see more dogs? The 110th and 111th annual Detroit Kennel Club Dog Shows will be held on Saturday and Sunday at Cobo Center.

MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM 7Thursday, February 28, 2013

By Jayla Kemp, 11, DetroitBy Alaya Braxton, 11, Detroit By Ajah Cooper, 11, Detroit

By Akira Wrigh, 12, Detroit By Tishyra Johnson 11, Detroit

Send usyour art

Draw on only white 8 -by-11 paper and use bright colors. Be sure to print your name, age, city and phone number clearly on the back of your drawing. Send your art to Yak’s Corner Art, c/o DNIE, 615 W. Lafayette Blvd., Detroit, MI 48226

THINK ABOUT ART

The artists today draw what they love about Detroit.

Draw what you love about spring. Be inspired by the bright, bold colors you see on this page.

What colors will you see more of in spring?

MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM88 Thursday, February 28, 2013

This page for young Yakkers is brought to you this week by readers of The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press who donated their vacation newspapers.