As part of the Alice’s Garden program, Fieldhands and Foodways, Brown Street Academy 4th & 5th grade students come to the garden each Thursday morning. This past Thursday, they visited the Kenosha Civil War Museum.

Fieldhands and Foodways is an agricultural, historical and cultural-based learning opportunity for young people and community families to celebrate the farming, food preparation, and folkways of African Americans and Africans throughout the Diaspora. FIELDHANDS AND FOODWAYS honors the historical setting of Alice’s Garden and the surrounding area, as the birthplace of the Underground Railroad in the state of Wisconsin.  In 1842, when farmer Deacon Samuel Brown became the first person to provide safe passage for 16 year old freedom seeker, Caroline Quarlls, an escaped slave from St. Louis, Missouri, that act of courage and compassion initiated the Underground Railroad in Wisconsin.  Brown, a Milwaukee founder and member of the Old Settler’s Club, was a known abolitionist.  Brown Street Academy is named in his honor. Quarlls was removed from a “sugar barrel” in the center of town by Brown and hidden on his farm overnight until the two rode out of the city next day to be helped by other local abolitionists in the surrounding area.  Caroline’s story is told at the museum and the letters she wrote to those who helped her reach safety in Canada are displayed there.

We thank the Greater Milwaukee Foundation for their generous support of this program!