Our Story

A Brief History

In September of 1858, John Price, a young Black man escaped from slavery in Kentucky, was approached by a boy, Shakespeare Boynton, the son of a wealthy Oberlin landholder. Unbeknownst to Price, Shakespeare had been sent by a group of Kentucky slave catchers and two Columbus deputies. The boy persuaded Price to go with him by saying that the Boyntons needed help harvesting crops, and they went off in a buggy. The conspirators intercepted the buggy with guns and knives, forced Price into their carriage, and sped toward the Wellington train station, their intent being to return John Price to the Kentucky slaveholder who had commissioned the manhunt.

When news of this reached Oberlin, a large crowd - Blacks and whites, townspeople and students - rode off towards Wellington. In the crowd were such prominent people as Charles Langston (one of the first Black students admitted to Oberlin, who later became the grandfather of poet/playwright Langston Hughes); James Fitch (bookseller and superintendent of the Oberlin Sunday School) and John Watson (a Black grocer and businessman). Watson led the charge into town, yelling "Kidnappers!" The Kentuckians, alarmed, hid Price in the attic of a hotel, while the Columbus deputies collected a posse to guard the doors. A mob gathered, demanding Price's release. Langston and Watson sought legal action, trying to persuade the village constable to arrest the slave catchers for kidnapping, and to secure a writ of habeas corpus. These attempts failed. Langston tried to calm the crowd and talk to Price's captors. When the kidnappers would not give Price up, Langston claimed "we will have him anyhow." The crowd rushed the guards and a struggle broke out, allowing Price to be hurried outside to a buggy and back to Oberlin. Price was hidden in the home of the Oberlin College president until he was taken across the border to Canada. Thirty-seven of the rescuers were arrested. Over the course of the trial, they chose to remain in jail, in solidarity with Langston and Simeon Bushnell (a white bookstore clerk), both of whom had been convicted. From prison, they printed a newspaper entitled The Rescuer, and challenged the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed for the capture and return of runaway enslaved people and levied harsh punishments on anyone who interfered. The constitutionality of the Act was narrowly upheld by the Ohio Supreme Court, a decision that so angered abolitionists, more than 10,000 people staged a protest march in Cleveland. Eventually the men who had captured John Price were arrested and charged with kidnapping; the charges were dropped.

Nothing is known of what happened to John Price.

This is of course not the end of the story, which transformed the lives of countless people and helped set the stage for the Civil War. This history’s themes and the questions it raises - about courage, about justice, about Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision of the Beloved Community -  still resonate in our current moment and across our country. 

The Project

Pat Spitzer was inspired by this history, and envisioned it brought to life as a play, performed out of doors and under the stars, somewhere in Lorain County, Ohio. Her vision expanded. She imagined audiences from the Midwest and beyond being drawn to this play and to a new outdoor venue for thrilling theater, music, and dance, inspired by untold stories of the Underground Railroad and by other compelling narratives from American history. Pat and her husband Alan Spitzer launched the Oberlin Wellington Rescue Theater Project with a community-based Advisory Board, and with consultation from the Institute for Outdoor Drama. They brought on a core staff to move the project forward and begin to grow an organization.

The first goal is to create the original play about the Oberlin Wellington Rescue, and premiere it during the summer of 2023. Playwright Ifa Bayeza has been commissioned to write the piece, which she imagines as a musical. This professional production will feature top-notch artistry and participation from local community members, both onstage and through rich auxiliary programming. The play will invite diverse, intergenerational audiences into an epic sweep of history while also engaging important questions about today. The vision is that, through this theater - both celebratory and provocative - lives will be enriched by deepened understandings of our shared history and inspired by renewed hopes of what is possible for our shared future.

In the summer of 2021, more than 50 community members met with Ifa Bayeza to help her launch her research. A staged reading of the piece was performed in the summer of 2022 for an invited audience consisting of theater-makers and theater-goers alike. In April 2023, Ifa will arrive in Ohio to begin a three-month creative residency, thanks to the support of the Lorain County Community Foundation. She will have time to write, research, and share excerpts from her play-in-progress in community centers. Her residency will culminate during the week of 2023 Juneteenth celebrations, with a showcase of The Rescue of John Price (working title), staged to receive feedback from stakeholders and create new community connections.

The additional, more far-reaching goal is the creation of a permanent venue as the home for this and other dynamic programs.