Midway through the escape, Cora’s best friend Lovey caught up with them and said she was running away with them, whether they liked it or not. Cora grabbed a hatchet, a bag of food and dug up the okra seeds her mother and grandmother left her, and she and Caesar took off running.
That’s when Cora’s love for herself eclipsed all else. Prior to the inhumane torture of Big Anthony, Terrance physically “inspected” Cora, letting her know that he likely would eventually rape her because she was his property. Upon his return, Terrance punished Big Anthony by burning him alive as a form of entertainment for him and his dinner guests… and as a warning for the watchful enslaved. This changed when slavecatchers foiled Big Anthony’s escape attempt and captured him. And both were whipped for their perceived insolence the following day. (Chester had accidentally bumped Terrance’s arm, causing the wine in the white master’s glass to stain his sleeve.)Įnraged, Terrance started to hit Chester with his cane until Cora intervened - and then he beat her, too. But life on the Georgia plantation where they are forced to live and work worsens when a maternally instinctive Cora attempts to shield a young boy named Chester from one of Master Terrance Randall’s wrathful beatings. This is of course no easy feat for Cora, who is so weighed down by the sorrow of her mother running away without her that she initially tells Caesar no when he proposes an escape plan.
Underground Railroad's Thuso Mbedu on Silently Capturing Cora's Emotions: Slaves 'Weren’t Allowed to Feel'īarry Jenkins on How The Underground Railroad Counters the Black Trauma Debate: 'These Things Happened'
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