The Rev. Ed Bailey's church runs an Underground Railroad history program, so you might say he knows something about the period.

But it took a visit to an art shop in South Carolina two years ago for Bailey to discover a little-known detail about the slave era: African Americans' pictures on Southern states' currency.

That find is bringing an artist to Lancaster this week for Bethel AME Church's Underground Railroad Conference, which will focus not just on the money but on the economy of the times.

"The Color of Money Freedom Through Economics'' is the theme for the fourth annual conference, held Thursday through Saturday at the church's cultural center on East Strawberry Street and at the Ramada Brunswick Hotel in Lancaster Square.

The keynote speaker will be John W. Jones, the South Carolina artist whose exhibit of paintings and companion book, "The Color of Money,'' brought the Southern currency to light.

Jones, a commercial artist, learned about the depiction of slaves on Southern bills when a collector asked him to enlarge an 1853 $10 bill. Jones was amazed to find images of blacks on the bill.

The Southern money is believed to be the only American currency featuring black people.

Jones began searching for more bills in those days, banks and other institutions printed money, as well as states and reproducing the images in paintings.

His paintings will be exhibited during the conference, Bailey said.

For Jones, and for Bailey, the inclusion of enslaved Africans all shown smiling as they work in the fields on money of the time indicates how central slavery was to the economy of the South.

"The South was richer than the North at one time,'' Bailey said, noting that South Carolina once was the richest state in the union, thanks in large part to the slave trade.

Slaves weren't only laborers, Bailey said; the Africans who didn't become American citizens until after the Civil War included highly skilled workmen who brought a premium price on the slave market. The South flourished through their unpaid labor.

Part of the story, too, is the way some slaves were able to barter their skills to help earn money for their freedom, Bailey said, and the way free Africans helped others to do the same.

It's a story Bailey would like to explore at the conference and in the future.

African entrepreneurs, Bailey said, "heavily invested in the Underground Railroad,'' but "what else did they do with their money?'' Richard Allen, a critical figure in early American Methodism and in the founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, for instance, owned "acres and acres of property in Philadelphia. He was a jack of all trades. These are the kinds of people we want to talk about.'' Bethel AME has economic aspirations in the present day. The church, under Bailey's leadership, has developed Living the Experience, an Underground Railroad program that draws thousands of visitors each year to a neighborhood that Bailey calls by its older name, Churchtowne.

He is hoping to build a wax museum of African-American history and, eventually, to build new houses and encourage spiritual descendants of entrepreneurs like Richard Allen to open their own businesses in Churchtowne.

The annual Underground Railroad conference is one way to develop a new economy.

"You just can't get away from the past,'' Bailey said. But he added that he isn't upset by the pictures on Southern money of smiling slaves picking cotton.

"It's a marvelous story,'' he said of the way slavery was finally abolished despite the entrenched economic interests of the South. "It's an American story. It's a God story.'' The Underground Railroad Conference opens with a 6 p.m. Thursday dinner honoring outgoing county Commissioner Ron Ford and continues with workshops and sessions from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday. For information, call Bethel AME Church, 393-8379. blog comments powered by Disqus