February is the month of love. It is also Black History Month. The Scottsbluff library has a book that touches both topics, "Forbidden Fruit: Love Stories from the Underground Railroad" by Betty DeRamus. Laws against slave and interracial marriages forced slave couples and couples, who crossed the color line, to flee the South if they hoped to legalize their love. Ms. DeRamus’ short book culled these stories of "forbidden" love from a variety sources, including slave narratives, unpublished memoirs, family histories and even cookbooks.

Lear Green was born a slave. As a child James Noble inherited her from his mother-in-law. She worked as a domestic servant in his Baltimore household. Lear loved barber William Adams, also a slave. When he escaped North, she followed him a week later with the aid of Baltimore Quakers. Her daring escape involved a sea chest and her future mother-in-law’s help. Stuffed inside a constricted sea chest and accompanied by her mother-in-law, Lear shipped herself to Philadelphia. As a free black woman, Mrs. Adams’ passage assigned her to a place on the deck where she kept an eye on the chest. Lear endured heat, sweat, cramped conditions, no food or water for eighteen hours until she docked in Philadelphia. The two women then traveled the Underground Railroad to Elmira, New York, where William and Lear married. Unfortunately, the story ended unhappily when Lear and William’s mother died three years later of disease.

Until relatively recently, one of the greatest taboos in the United States was marriage between the races. In the South this taboo met even more revulsion. Interracial couples frequently risked death if authorities discovered their relationship. White men raped Black women with impunity; however, mobs lynched Black men (also with impunity) for even looking at a white woman. The story of Emmett Till is a case-in-point. Needless to say, many couples whose love crossed the color barrier escaped North to survive.

Born on the same day in 1813, Daniel and John Walls grew up best friends in Troublesome Creek, North Carolina. (Isn’t that a great name!) Daniel was white, and John was his slave. When Daniel died of an unknown illness, he freed John and left his wife Jane and their four children to John’s care. John and Jane fell in love. Knowing their safety depended upon escaping Troublesome Creek, they fled north. Along the way a slave catcher overtook them. Jane whipped John to prove that he was her slave and she was his mistress. Upon arriving in Indianapolis, they married at a Quaker safe house. Later they fled to Canada where they raised their family and lived out their lives. Amazingly, Jane returned to North Carolina twice—once to lead slaves to freedom and the second time to bid her father a permanent goodbye. Although they experienced prejudice in Canada, the Walls’ home became a refuge for other slaves. The site of their home is now the John Freeman Walls Historic Site and Underground Railroad Museum in Puce, Ontario.

"Forbidden Fruit" is a short book of basically two hundred pages but a quick-read and well worth the time. It includes many more stories of persecution, devotion, and daring-do and is all the more amazing because the stories are true. During this month, which celebrates love and Black history, I recommend you read "Forbidden Truth: Love Stories From the Underground Railroad" by Betty DeRamus.

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