ADG Perspective

T H E U N D E R G R O U N D R A I L R O A D | P E R S P E C T I V E 5 3 the writers' room on Underground Railroad. So right from the start, the specter of this epic dark adventure loomed on the horizon. I had read Whitehead's hauntingly prescient historical novel and knew how much it was about current times. Too much of America is getting back to its 1850's self. As a child of the 1960s, experiencing the institutionalized revival of supremacy was mind-boggling. Or was it? Had things changed as much as we'd hoped? Here was a story that was ostensibly set one hundred and sixty years ago, yet it poignantly describes our contemporary every day. Adapting this novel in Trump's America felt like a mission of resistance. The novel portrays an escaped slave, Cora, in her journey through a magically real 1850 America. A place that is purposely replete with historical anachronisms, some technological, like high- rise elevator buildings in 1850 South Carolina or sociological, such as the eugenics movements, the diabolical Tuskegee experiments, or tragic, such as the Tulsa riots. By juggling the historical timetable, The Underground Railroad makes the case that much of what once plagued us does so still. Slavery is no longer legal, but the fact of it is still permanently etched into our cultural core. But even that is not the only main point of this inspiring story. The center of this tale, the core of Cora is the incredible resistance and achievement she and our African American founders accomplished in the face of these impossible odds. And how that made America. The better America. Cora's journey traces a map from the deepest south, all the way across the Ohio River to Indiana. It ends with her on a wagon headed west still in search of her ever-elusive freedom. A. THE TENNESSEE STATION FEATURED A MURAL DEPICTING THE DIGGING OF THE RAILROAD, CREATED BY SAM MESSER, ONE OF MY CLOSEST FRIENDS.

• 0C1_ADG MAY-JUNE 2021