Historical+Connection

True North was set in 1858-1917. Many people would know this as the slavery period.

This book makes many connections to history, one being Harriett Tubman. Tubman led many slaves to freedom while she was a slave. In the book she was leading Arika's group until she fell behind to protect her baby. She led many slaves on the underground reailroad and to buildings called safe houses. Harriett Tubman was a very important person in history during this time period.

This book also relates to the underground railroad. Afrika traveled along this road as many other slaves did. The underground railroad was not a railroad it was many paths and trails through the woods. On the trail there were many things called safe houses where runaway slaves would hide out for the night. There is still many parts of the underground railroad that are still in tact today.

Also many slaves dressed up as men. Afrika dressed up as a male becuase there were wanted signs for her all over the country. Many slaves dressed up like this because they needed to hide their identity from slave catchers. If a slave catcher could not identify them then they couldn't send them back to their owner. This was very common to do for women slaves and very easy for them to hide who they really were.

Safe house's were used all along the east coast for slaves to do many different things. Slaves would go in these for shelter to sleep in to get food or just to have a place to rest for awhile, and know that there was a place that they could go and not have to worry about being found. There would be many different signals letting the slaves know wether the house was safe to enter or not. For example if a light was on then it was safe, but if there was no light then you could not enter because it was dangerous.Many slaves used these as a way to escape from slave catchers if they were near.