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Rufai Shardow is a teacher, and his classroom is in the cobblestones and history of the New Bedford streets.
His textbook is homemade, full of photocopied pictures and anecdotes from the city’s proud role in the Underground Railroad system of the 1800s.
But this collection of stories starts with his story: raised in Ghana, where his community was built around the still-intact slave compound from the African nation’s painful past. It wasn’t until he came to America, and began studying history, that he even knew the roots of his home. “It was not something that we talked about.”
Treasures is a celebration of all things that make the New Bedford area special. If you have a place or event that you’d like us to explore, send an email to tips@newbedfordlight.org.
He now spends his days talking about it.
For over a decade, he has been a full-time park ranger for the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park.
There are more than 400 different organizations in the national park system, and the majority of them are like New Bedford’s — not about vast protected wildlife, but about the history that happened in a specific place.
In fact, there is no real protected land in this particular park — just the visitor center on 33 William St., where a dedicated group of rangers and volunteers gather to meet the public and help them explore the downtown area.
Starting in late May and going into the fall, the visitor center is where rangers and volunteers start and finish two walking tours a day. From Wednesday to Sunday, they lead groups of whoever shows up on a variety of topics, with start times of 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.
With “Whaling” in the name of the park, and the museum just steps away, many of the tour’s subjects revolve around that history — it is, after all, the main drawing card for historical tourism in the city.
But the Underground Railroad series, with Shardow as the main guide, is something not to be missed.
On an overcast Saturday morning, a small group met at the visitor center to browse the exhibits before embarking on what would be a 90-minute tour.
As you learn over the course of the walking tour, which proceeds up William and then down Union in a horseshoe pattern, there were many desirable sites in the North for slaves to find freedom.
But none were more desirable than New Bedford. There were many jobs on the waterfront that were open to people of all races and backgrounds, and it was known as a secure haven for free slaves — as Shardow puts it, if you made it here, you were truly safe.
He asks rhetorically how many men and women were captured by the “slave hunters” of the day, then answers his own question with a closed fist.
“None,” he says. “Zero.”
As he recounts the stories of former slaves who found success here, he repeats a phrase: “What would they have been, if they had remained in the South?”
Of all those what-ifs, Frederick Douglass remains the centerpiece.
Douglass arrived in New Bedford in 1838 with his wife and lived with Nathan and Polly Johnson on Seventh Street. Empowered by what he saw here — Black men owning property, living alongside whites — he became a passionate public voice for the abolitionist movement. By the time he left New Bedford five years later with his family, he was already well on his way to being the century’s most famous and influential Black speaker.
Abolition Row Park, across from the still-preserved Johnson house, was unveiled in 2023, featuring a large, beautifully detailed statue of a thoughtful young Douglass from his time here.
As Shardow stands next to the statue and recounts the great man’s life, he puts his hand on Douglass’ hand several times as if he were an old and beloved friend.
The tour leaves the Douglass memorial, where it’s joined by a late-arriving group. A family of five is here from Arizona to celebrate their oldest son’s graduation from Brown University and have come to New Bedford in part to explore their Black history.
As he’s been doing throughout, Shardow chooses someone to read a passage — in this case, it’s the family’s youngest child, a pre-teen boy. He takes the book and delivers the story with a gravity that makes you bow your head in reflection.
The tour reaches the bottom of Union Street where the YMCA building stands. People of all races, ages and genders bustle in and out as Shardow points to the ground — this is where Douglass emerged from a stagecoach into his new life, a life that would impact generations of Black Americans.
And so, when Shardow turns to look up from the bottom of Union Street toward the Johnson House, you turn with him.
“Can you imagine it?” he says, his voice filling with passion. “To walk up this street, to know for the first time, that you are a free man.”
Shardow lets it sink in, and although he’s given this tour hundreds of times, there’s no difference in his complete conviction: something this special should never be forgotten.
“It happened right here,” pausing for a moment with a shake of the head. “Right here!”
“In New Bedford.”
Jonathan Comey is a decorated newspaper editor and columnist and a contributor to The New Bedford Light. Please send emails to him at jcomey@newbedfordlight.org.
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Beautiful piece.. you can feel Shardow’s impact.
I love this.
Articles like this are invaluable to enlighten readership about New Bedford’s past ( Frederick Douglass and Lewis Temple) and present ( Rufai Shardow).
More articles, of this nature, would elucidate what New Bedford was and what it could or should be in the present.