Above: Phil Lapsansky and Lorene Cary (holding book) with students from Audenried High School

The Librarian and the Author:
SOSNA Organizes "One Book, One Philadelphia" Event

Lorene Cary (center, rear) and teacher Mildred Dickerson (left, rear) with students from Audenried High School, who are beginning a study unit on the book the week of April 7. Click for enlargement. The students will be contributing reports on the event and on the book for the website in the weeks to come.

From February through April all of Philadelphia will be reading and talking about The Price of a Child, by Southwest Center City resident Lorene Cary. On March 31, 7:30 p.m. at St. Mary's Episcopal Church, 1831 Bainbridge Street, Cary and the historian who pointed her toward the story that formed the basis of the book presented a program that brought history to life in a variety of ways.

Lapsansky's talk, "Aboard William Still's Underground Rail Road," was illustred with slides of publications from the 1850s showing the major players in the rescue of Jane Johnson, the real woman on whom Cary's main character is based. Lapsansky is the head of reference services, The Library Company of Philadelphia. He also shed light on the numbers of escaped slaves who were making their way to freedom at that time and on the condition of free blacks in Philadelphia.

Following Lapsansky's talk, Cary explained her motivation for writing The Price of a Child. Explaining that much of her sense of history came from Gone with the Wind, she said, "You know -- that music (da-daaaaa-da-da), the soft sound of darky laughter, the happy, contented slaves-- it was poison!" So she set out to write about the same time period from the perspective of one of the many slaves who were neither happy nor contented. "Reading the sources that Phil found for me," she said, "started a kind of video going off in my head." [Many of those sources can now be read from the Library Company website, below.] Cary then read several moving passages from the novel.

The question-and-answer period following the two presentations would have lasted for hours had the meeting space not been needed to house 27 homeless men for the night. Many members of the audience, African Americans from the neighborhood, shared their own family stories of enslaved ancestors, attempts to reunite families, and migrations from the south to Philadelphia. One participant told of her great-great-grandfather, who walked from slavery in Mississippi to freedom in Pennsylvania -- twice. After being captured and returned to his master, he escaped again. Another, a centenarian, told of hearing first-hand stories from relatives who had been born into slavery.

SOSNA is grateful to the One Book, One Philadelphia Project; to Lorene Cary and Phil Lapsansky for giving so generously of their time; to the Library Company and other area special collections libraries for making source documents available on the World Wide Web; to St. Mary's Episcopal Church for making meeting space available; and to Christ Church, Philadelphia, for the loan of a podium and sound system.

Online Resources

>>Free Library of Philadelphia, One Book, One Philadelphia website
>>The Liberation of Jane Johnson - the real-life story behind The Price of a Child -- online at the Library Company of Philadelphia website
>>Related resources from the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections libraries

One Book, One Philadelphia is a collaboration of the Mayor's Office, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and other community partners.

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SOSNA is the Neighborhood Advisory Committee for the area from South Street to Washington Avenue, Broad Street West to the Schuylkill River, funded by the Office of Housing and Community Development to provide citizen input into their redevelopment process in our community. SOSNA is a registered nonprofit corporation exempt from Federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Site contents copyright SOSNA except where indicated.