The incredible story of how Black waiters at a Niagara Falls hotel helped enslaved people reach freedom
Documentary filmmaker and host on the archaeological dig that helped bring the story to life
An incredible piece of history has been uncovered in an unassuming park in Niagara Falls, N.Y. Here, one of the Underground Railroad's most important stations once stood: an upscale hotel called the Cataract House.
In Secret Agents of the Underground Railroad, host Anthony Morgan joins an archaeology team, supported by the local Black community, as they uncover evidence of a Black resistance operation run out of the hotel, which operated from 1825 to 1945. Led by head waiter John Morrison and others, hotel wait staff secretly guided enslaved people to freedom in Canada.
For both Morgan and the film's director, Adrian Callender, making the documentary taught them a lot about local Black history, the legacy of Black resistance in the area, and how science helped bring these stories back to life for the community.
Their interview, below, has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Before making this documentary, had you ever heard of the Cataract House or what had happened there?
Anthony Morgan: I knew that the Underground Railroad was important. I knew that it got people to Canada. I had no idea how or what role the Cataract House played in it.
Adrian Callender: There's a lot in this film that I did not know before.
I don't know how many times I've been awed by Niagara Falls, but I was unaware [that there used to be] this massive hotel beside the falls that was also the stage for an epic story of slavery and freedom.
Q: Why did you want to make this documentary?
AC: This film presented a chance to combine two of my greatest interests [science and social history]. It presented me with a chance to document an archaeological dig, which was a boyhood dream. It also was an opportunity to help focus attention on a meaningful chapter of Black history.
This story reminded me that the soil we walk on holds incredible stories and lessons for us if we are willing to seek them out. It takes an investigation like this archaeological dig to return these lost stories to us, so that we can be reminded of the challenges our ancestors faced.
AM: I didn't feel like I had a very clear understanding of the role of slavery in Canada, the role of Black people in emancipating themselves from slavery, or really much about Black history at all.
Q: Many of us have a basic knowledge about the Underground Railroad which we learned in school. But what did this project teach you?
AC: The moment we stop caring about our past is the moment we miss the chance to learn from it. If we are living only in the now and forgetting about those who came before us, then we're always starting from zero and playing out the same story and making the same mistakes. History can give us a road map not just for the future, but also for how to live in the present.
This Underground Railroad station was unique. Enslavers came to vacation at the Cataract House and often brought enslaved people to serve them. In some cases, those enslaver families had to go back [home] alone because the wait staff at the hotel helped the enslaved people escape to Canada.
AM: Number 1 — I had no idea that there was this network of, basically, secret agents who came together … to achieve things that seem unthinkable, right under the nose of enslavers. It was astonishing to discover how coordinated they were.
The other thing that I learned a lot about was the kinds of [methods] that archaeologists use to understand the world around us. Employing really high-tech tools like LiDAR and ground-penetrating radar was amazing to witness. They really are "time detectives," who piece together pieces of our history that we had no idea we'd lost.
Q: What struck you as different about this story?
AC: This story is about enslaved people and free Black people doing everything they could to resist slavery. The Underground Railroad was a movement of resistance — of course I knew this fact — but seeing what John Morrison and the other staff at the hotel did adds yet another layer of heroism to the story.
[It's] also about a community using science to recover their own lost history. The Black community of Niagara Falls initiated this archaeological project, and the community push dovetailed with a shift that's been underway in archaeology for some time.
Community archaeology is a new approach that brings local communities and archaeologists together.… This is a fascinating shift that should reduce racial bias in the interpretation of archaeological finds.
Q: Why is it important to use community archaeology when unearthing Black history?
AM: The stories that we tell ourselves genuinely shape the way the world presents itself to us. And archaeologists can bring parts of [the stories of Black people] back to us that can allow us to tell new stories about ourselves.
If we're not careful, we can let the stories we tell ourselves about slavery diminish us, that make us think and believe that we're capable of less than we are.
This story in particular, I think, can really help to transform the story that Black people tell about themselves and make themselves much more powerful and effective in the world as a consequence.
AC: So much of Black history in the Americas remains to be documented. Science is our most powerful tool for learning about the past. Archaeology helps us bring lost history to life. There's no feeling quite like touching an artifact [that had been] held by people who changed history hundreds of years earlier. There's no feeling quite like [being in] the same physical space where history unfolded.
In this film, we see people touch the ruins of the buried hotel. The Cataract House was a place where enslaved people found aid and salvation in such a unique way. And now, because of the excavation, more people will know the story and be able to connect to it in a tangible way.
Q: What's one thing that stood out to you when making this film?
AC: One of the most powerful moments in the film happens when a member of the Black community gets to stand in the ruins of the kitchen. His reaction is incredibly emotional. He cries as he's overcome by the realization that he's standing in a lost space where thousands of Black people were saved from enslavement. It's a moment that happened because the community made it happen, but also because science and archaeology made it real.
AM: For some people, archaeology is a very slow-moving science, right? You're very painstakingly excavating the earth 10 centimetres at a time and you're sifting through all this dirt, and it can feel like a very long process.… The thing that really was thrilling was there was this moment where all of the archaeologists were standing around the open area — the part that was excavated, basically — and they're looking at all their maps, and they're trying to overlay them, and they're putting together all this data, and they have all these little puzzle pieces. And there's a moment when all the pieces fit together, and you see it on their faces, and they're like, "Oh my God, we found it! We did it — we hit exactly what we were looking for!"
It was this revelation and just this outpouring of excitement, gratitude, enthusiasm and just joy at all these pieces coming together — all these months and years of arguing and hard work coming together in that moment. It was the most exciting thing ever, and I didn't know archaeology could be [like] that.
Watch Secret Agents of the Underground Railroad on The Nature of Things.
For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.
