Porsha Stewart may be the granddaughter of the late civil rights leader Hosea Williams, but that don’t mean the RHOA star knows squat about the subject.. At the ripe age of 32, Stewart believes that the Underground Railroad was an actual train. Her only question was, did it run on steam or was it electric?
The revelation came out on Sunday night’s episode of the “Real Housewives of Atlanta,” as the ladies took a trip to Savannah, visiting a landmark church that was used as part of the Underground Railroad during the pre-Civil War era.
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The tour guide explained that the holes in the floor were used for ventilation as people would pass under the church in a small four foot area of crawl space, which had Stewart puzzled.
”Well there has to be an opening for the railroad at some point because somebody’s driving the train,” Porsha said. “It’s not electric like what we have now,” she added.
“It wasn’t a train, baby,” Phaedra Parks explained as Stewart’s costars stood in shock. “That was just a euphemism, baby.”
“It wasn’t a train at all,” Parks continued as Kandi Burruss tried to help clear up Porsha’s confusion.
“Just a railroad,” Stewart said, now thinking it was train tracks. “Oh, I’m thinking it was like widespread.”
While Phaedra and Kandi simply tried to educate Porsha, the rest of the ladies had their own thoughts to share on Stewart’s headline-making flub.
“Really, like really? You actually thought there was an actually train that took them through,” Cynthia Bailey vented in her confessional before adding that “[Porsha’s] grandfather Hosea Williams, a trusted member of Martin Luther King Jr.’s inner circle, just rolled over in his grave.”
“It’s almost hurtful to watch her be so dumb,” Kenya Moore, Stewart’s nemesis and former pageant queen said.
While Stewart has yet to address her controversial comments, Kenya Moore wrote about last night’s episode on her Bravo blog and didn’t hold back while discussing her disapproval for Porsha’s lack of education.
“Porsha is an embarrassment to her grandfather, his legacy, her family, and most importantly, herself,” she wrote. “It’s easy to laugh and call her dumb, but the reality is even more painful — WE have failed her. Our educational system has failed her, anyone who coddled her or encouraged her to focus on her makeup, weave, and shoes to find a man to take care of her rather than her education has failed her. Anyone laughing at this gross ignorance has failed her. I encourage all people to teach our young girls to value the things that one cannot take away from you.”
For those of you who need to brush up on your turn of the century slave history, The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists, both black and white, free and enslaved, who aided the fugitives. Various other routes led to Mexico or overseas. While an “underground railroad” running south toward Florida, then a Spanish possession, existed from the late 17th century until shortly after the American Revolution, the network now generally known as the Underground Railroad was formed in the early 19th century, and reached its height between 1850 and 1860. One estimate suggests that by 1850, 100,000 slaves had escaped via the “Railroad”. British North America (present-day Canada), where slavery was prohibited, was a popular destination, as its long border gave many points of access. More than 30,000 people were said to have escaped there via the network during its 20-year peak period, although U.S. Census figures account for only 6,000. Some fugitives’ stories are documented in The Underground Railroad by William Still.