The nomination of Barack Obama as the Democratic Party’s candidate for President is without doubt a watershed event in American history. But its meaning varies according to one’s viewpoint, life experience and – most especially – where you happen to think America has been and where it is going in terms of its long struggle with race.

This is a pertinent issue for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Our mission seeks to find relevance and application in the modern-day world of the lessons to be learned in the struggle for freedom and the abolition of slavery in pre-Civil War America. Of the many narratives linking that history to the present, one of the most important (and in some ways most controversial) is the lasting impact of slavery in contemporary society. And an essential and so far unanswered component of that discussion is the question of whether we are, as a nation, ever going to be willing to have a serious national conversation on race.

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