The 7th Annual National Conference on the Underground Railroad opens today at the Freedom Center.  The focus of this year’s conference is Lincoln’s Era: The Role of Religion in the Underground Railroad.

The keynote speaker launching the conference is Lerone Bennett, Jr., this evening at 7 p.m. at the Freedom Center. Other highlights of the conference, which runs through Saturday, Nov. 8, are lectures by Lincoln scholar Roger Billings, a Negro Spiritual Festival at Union Baptist Church, and the Children of Abraham Interfaith Service closing the conference on Sunday evening, Nov. 8 at 6 p.m.

Onsite conference registration is still available.  For more information, please call 513-333-7518.

Get more conference information here.

The role of churches & people of faith working against the institution of slavery during the 1800s will be the focus of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center’s 7th Annual National Conference on the Underground Railroad Conference the weekend of Nov. 6-8, 2008 in Cincinnati, Ohio. This year’s theme: “Lincoln’s Era: The Role of Religion in the Underground Railroad.”

The conference, co-sponsored by Xerox, Northern Kentucky University and the Freedom Center, is a must event for anyone who is curious about how religious faith was the bedrock of abolitionist sentiment in the years leading up to the Civil War.

Conference presenters, including historians Lerone Bennet, Jr., Dr. Roger Billings, Dr. Gary Zola and Bishop T.D. Jakes, will offer perspectives on the struggle for freedom from the viewpoints of Christianianity, Islam and Judaism, as well as the attititudes and beliefs of President Abraham Lincoln — and how those beliefs affected his actions and decisions on the great question of slavery.

For more information on the confererence, including accommodations, fees, etc., click here.

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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