A movie to be released Thursday, October 31st, will challenge many of the myths that surround Harriet Tubman. In the version of American history that is taught in our schools and featured in children’s literature, Tubman has always been one of the few African-Americans associated with the Underground Railroad. “Few figures in American history have been
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July 13, 2019 Our newest publication, John Hatfield Barber, Deacon, Abolitionist, was written for the Hatfield family and researchers. There are two versions available on our current publication page—a version of the story and an expanded version with more genealogical information. I’m going to interject myself into the story now, something I don’t usually
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A rare photograph of Levi Coffin which we feature in our Escape of the 28 booklet was just sold at auction. The story of this photo was published in the Fulton Sun on June 26, 2019. This picture is believed to be taken by prominent nineteenth century African-American photographer, abolitionist and businessman, James Presley Ball here in
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The story of the Escape of the 28 is featured in an episode of Bizarre Foods currently airing on the Travel Channel. Check the Travel Channel website for showings of “Underground Railroad” episode or watch it on You Tube. Many local and regional historians and food experts appear in the show–the Wainscotts, Kristin Kitchen, Carl
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The film by Charles Campbell, All Or Nothin’, which is a dramatization of the Escape of the 28 from Boone County Ky, through College Hill, en route to Canada, was inspired by our research on the Escape of the 28. Local actors from the Cincinnati Black Theater Company and others were cast in the film that was
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Local historian and colleague in Hamilton Avenue Road to Freedom committee talks with Cincinnati People about Wesleyan Cemetery.
Jim Crow’s legacy has many faces. In this case, as the article For the Forgotten African-American Dead (Brian Palmer, 7 Jan 2017, NY Times) illustrates, it’s in the obliteration of Black history – the history of heroic participation by black soldiers in the Civil War, the history of esteemed forebears – by the neglect of
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In the era of the Underground Railroad, enslaved people of color took charge of emancipating themselves, and white abolitionists figured out ways to assist. It took later historians like Larry Gara and Keith Griffler to deconstruct the myth that set white people up as the conductors and even originators of the northward movement of freedom
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Recently, documents have been found in the Georgetown University archives that show the 1838 transaction of 272 enslaved people from the Jesuits’ Maryland plantation to former Louisiana governor (later U.S. Congressman) Henry Johnson and his associate Jesse Beatty. While these families were promised that they would stay together and to be able to practice their religion, all these promises
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I had the pleasure of visiting Plymouth Church in Brooklyn New York. Through their displays, signage and art, I learned about its most famous minister–Henry Ward Beecher. Plymouth Church is doing a great job of keeping its abolitionist history alive. Henry Ward Beecher was born on June 24, 1813 in Litchfield, Connecticut, the son of
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