The Freedom Trail Symbol Analysis

The Freedom Trail is an endless row of lynched black bodies in North Carolina, left out on display to warn black people against rebellion. The bodies are mutilated and rotting, and the Freedom Trail thus represents the gory reality of white supremacy. The Trail is a mythic site with fantastical elements, such as the fact that it has no beginning or end. In this way, the Trail represents the limitless and unimaginable violence exerted on black people and the absolute moral vacuum of white supremacy. While no such trail existed in history, lynching was such a massive phenomenon that if the bodies of all the black people lynched in America were lined up, the trail would indeed stretch out in a seemingly infinite manner. Furthermore, because this violence was so widespread and normalized, it is impossible to know the exact numbers of people murdered in this way. The infinite nature of the Freedom Trail thus represents the unknowability of the history of black life in America, particularly given the fact that enslaved people were forbidden from recording accounts of their own lives and that those who were lynched were silenced forever. The trail confirms the symbolic link between death and freedom in the novel. While Cora is on the run, most of the people who flee with her or help her are killed, and thus Cora is haunted by her own symbolic Freedom Trail comprised of all the deaths that take place during her escape.