Episode 26: A Free Metropolis Cincinnati And The Margaret Garner Story Read By Isabel Isenhart Oldham County History Center

Cincinnati was free soil but not necessarily a place of warm and welcome reception for the freedom seekers. Black Laws were passed to suppress free Black communities in Cincinnati and the mix of free Blacks with enslaved Blacks was highly discouraged. The Margaret Garner case received worldwide attention when Garner and her family was captured in Cincinnati as they fled the A.K. Gaines Maplewood Plantation in Boone County, Kentucky. Garner slit the throats of her four children, killing her two-year-old daughter, rather than have her children enslaved. The family was captured by Gaines and federal marshals and shipped downriver.