People of the Underground Railroad

Known as "Old Man Eloquent," this former U.S. president argued against slavery. His defense of the Africans in the Amistad case helped free Cinque and his fellow Africans.

As a member of the House of Representatives, Adams presented petition after petition to end the "gag rule" about slavery, despite his colleagues' anger. The gag rule was eventually overturned.

When Adams died in 1848, he was mourned as an articulate and courageous advocate for human rights.

For younger readers

• Walker, Jane C. John Quincy Adams (United States Presidents) (Enslow, 2000). Reading level: Ages 9-12.

For older readers:

• Barnes, Gilbert Hobbs The Anti-Slavery Impulse 1830-1844 (Harcourt Brace, 1964).
• Buckmaster, Henrietta Let My People Go (Univ. of South Carolina Press, reprint 1992).
• Miller, William Lee Arguing About Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress (Vintage, 1998).
• Parsons, Lynn Hudson John Quincy Adams (American Profiles) (Madison House, 1998).
• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford Univ. Press, 1969).

Born a slave in Philadelphia, Allen went on to become one of the country's leading religious figures of the 18th and 19th century. He was known as a dynamic Methodist minister who converted many people, including his owner. The owner allowed Allen to purchase his freedom, which he did.

He returned to Philadelphia and drew so many African Americans into St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church that difficulties arose between White and Black members of the congregation. In 1787 Blacks were relegated to the gallery at St. George. In response, Allen founded one of the earliest self-help organizations for Blacks, the Free African Society. Along with Absalom Jones, he led a movement of Blacks away from St. George's to form two separate churches - St. Thomas's Free African Church within the Protestant Episcopal denomination led by Jones, and the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (Mother Bethel) led by Allen. Allen was later ordained a Bishop.

Allen was one of the first people in the nation to denounce slavery. He also voiced strong disapproval of schemes to send Blacks back to Africa ("colonization.")

For younger readers

• Asante, Molefi K. and Mark T. Mattson Historical and Cultural Atlas of African Americans (Macmillan, 1991).
• Klots, Steve and Nathan I. Huggins (eds.)Richard Allen (Black Americans of Achievement) (Chelsea House, 1991). Reading level: Ages 9-12.

For older readers:

• Alexander, E. Curtis Richard Allen: The First Exemplar of African American Education (African American Educator Series, Vol III)(ECA Associates, 1985).
• Franklin, John Hope and Alfred A. Moss Jr. From Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1988).
• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford Univ. Press, 1969).

Anderson earned the nickname "General Superintendent" of the Underground Railroad for his efforts in Northwestern Ohio. He is thought to have helped approximately 1,000 fugitives along the way to freedom before he was caught and taken to a Kentucky jail where he died in 1857.

For younger readers

• Hamilton, Virginia Many Thousands Gone: from Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1993).

For older readers:

• Franklin, John Hope and Alfred A. Moss Jr. From Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1988).

One of five escapees from John Brown's raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Anderson was a printer by trade. He was born a free Black in Pennsylvania and moved to Chatham, Ontario, a popular end-point of the Underground Railroad.

At Chatham he heard John Brown speak in 1858 about the evils of slavery. Anderson volunteered to join Brown's ill-fated attack on Harpers Ferry.

After escaping during the raid, Anderson went on to serve as a Union soldier in the Civil War. He later wrote the only account of the raid by one of the people involved.

For younger readers

• Barrett, Tracy Harpers Ferry. The Story of John Brown's Raid (Milbrook Press, 1993).
• McKissack, Patricia and McKissack, Frederick Rebels Against Slavery: American Slave Revolts(Scholastic, 1996).

For older readers:

• Johnson, Charles, Patricia Smith, and the WGBH Series Research Team Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery (Harcourt Brace, 1998).
• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford Univ. Press, 1969).
• Time Life Books African Americans: Voices of Triumph. Perseverance (1993).

A self-taught astronomer and mathematician, Banneker was hired by President Washington and Secretary of State Jefferson to survey the soon-to-be city of Washington, DC. Banneker had grown up a free Black in Maryland, the son of a free Black woman and a former slave.

In 1791, Banneker wrote an almanac, a booklet that charted the weather conditions. As the first Black to do so, he had trouble finding a printer. Finally, James Pemberton, the president of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, and other abolitionists helped him find a publisher, but not until the next year. Banneker had to refigure all of his information.

He also wrote to President Thomas Jefferson asserting that Black people were not inferior to Whites and should be free. He chided Jefferson for owning slaves himself. Banneker enclosed a copy of his almanac with the letter. His next year's almanac (1793) included the letter he had written to Jefferson, along with Jefferson's reply.

For younger readers

• Pinkney, Andrea Davis and Brian Pinkney (illustrator)Dear Benjamin Banneker (Harcourt Brace, 1994).

For older readers:

• Asante, Molefi K. and Mark T. Mattson Historical and Cultural Atlas of African Americans (Macmillan, 1991).
• Bedini, Sylvio The Life of Benjamin Banneker The First African-American Man of Science (Maryland Historical Society, 1999).
• Potter, Joan and Claytor, Constance African American Firsts (Pinter Press, 1994).

The brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and the son of Rev. Lyman Beecher, Henry was a well known preacher. The Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York, where he preached regularly drew more than 3,000 people to hear his sermons. He became a fiery voice for abolitionism.

In a dramatic moment, Rev. Beecher brought into the church the chains that had held John Brown as he was led to his death for treason. Beecher stomped on the chains, calling for an end to slavery.

For younger readers

• Barrett, Tracy Harpers Ferry: The Story of John Brown's Raid, (Milbrook Press, 1993).

For older readers:

• Buckmaster, Henrietta Let My People Go (Univ. of South Carolina Press, reprint 1992).
• McPherson, James M. The Struggle for Equality (Princeton Univ. Press, 1992).
• Stewart, James Brewer Holy Warriors. The Abolitionists and American Slavery (Hill and Wang, 1976).

A Quaker, Benezet was known as a prolific antislavery writer and champion of African Americans' rights. In his early years as a schoolmaster in a Quaker school, he tutored enslaved and free Blacks in the evenings.

Benezet's writings were unique for the time, as they described the advanced African cultures from which many of the slaves had come. Benezet was unique among abolitionists as he spent time among the Blacks in Philadelphia. In 1773 Benezet was able to convince his fellow Quakers to set up a school for free Blacks. Later, the school enrolled enslaved Blacks as well.

He called for the first meeting of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1775. Benjamin Rush, a later convert to the antislavery cause, attributed his change in views to a dream featuring the ghost of Benezet.

For older readers:

• Benezet, Anthony Anthony Benezet (Ayer Co., 1959).
• Benezet, Anthony Views of American Slavery Taken a Century Ago (Ayer Co. Pub., 1969).

This brave man tried to escape from seven different owners before finally being successful. "Among the good trades I learned was the art of running away to perfection. I made a regular business of it," he wrote.

In a letter, Bibb wrote one of his former owners: "You may perhaps think hard of us for running away from slavery, but as to myself, I have but one apology to make for it, which is this: I have only to regret that I did not start at an earlier period."

He spoke to abolitionist audiences of his experiences as a slave. Later, he established a community in Canada for fugitives, called Refugees' Home.

For younger readers

• Haskins, Jim Get on Board: The Story of the Underground Railroad(Scholastic, 1993).
• Katz, William Loren Breaking the Chains: African American Slave Resistance (Atheneum, 1990).
• Sawyer, Kem Knapp The Underground Railroad in American History (Enslow, 1997).

For older readers:

• Bibb, Henry "Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave (1849)" in Andrews, William L. and Henry Louis Gates Jr. (eds.) The Civitas Anthology of African American Slave Narratives (Civitas, 1999).
• Johnson, Charles; Patricia Smith; and the WGBH Series Research Team Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery (Harcourt Brace, 1998).
• Ripley, C. Peter (ed.) Witness for Freedom. African American voices on race, slavery and emancipation (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1993).

Brown's story is one of the cleverest ones in the history of the Underground Railroad. He convinced a White carpenter to build a crate and another man to take the crate, with Brown in it, to the Adams Shipping Company in Richmond, Virginia. From there, the crate was sent to the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Office. Twenty-six hours later, the top of the crate was pried off and Brown emerged, a free man.

He wrote a book about the experience and became well-known for his creative approach. Brown toured England speaking to anti-slavery audiences in the early 1850s.

For younger readers

• Hamilton, Virginia Many Thousands Gone: from Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1993).
• Cosner, Sharon The Underground Railroad(Franklin Watts, 1991).
• Haskins, Jim Get on Board: The Story of the Underground Railroad (Scholastic, 1993).
• Katz, William Loren Breaking the Chains: African-American Slave Resistance (Atheneum, 1990).
• Sawyer, Kem Knapp The Underground Railroad in American History(Enslow, 1997).
• Paulson, Timothy J. Days of Sorrow, Years of Glory 1830-1850 (Chelsea House, 1994).

For most of his life, William only had a first name. As a slave in Kentucky and Missouri, he saw horrible acts first-hand. For instance, he had to watch as his mother was whipped for getting to the field 10 minutes late. Another time he was forced to trim gray hairs from older men's whiskers so the slaveowner could get a better price at the auction block.

Brown tried several times to escape, finally making it by boarding a steamboat for Ohio. There he was taken in by a man named Wells Brown and his wife. To honor the care and help they provided, William took the man's name as his own. After staying with the Browns for 15 days, he started walking north to Cleveland. When he finally got there, Lake Erie was frozen and he had to wait until it thawed before getting to Canada. In the meantime he started to help other fugitives escape to freedom.

His home in Buffalo, New York, became an important station along the Underground Railroad. In later years Brown became a well-known speaker for abolition.

Brown wrote a narrative of his experiences in 1849, followed by the first African American novel, Clotel, in 1852. Three other books followed: St. Domingo, The Rising Son, and My Southern Home.

For younger readers

• Sawyer, Kem Knapp The Underground Railroad in American History (Enslow Publishers, 1997).
• Haskins Jim Get on Board: The Story of the Underground Railroad (Scholastic, 1993).

For older readers:

• Brown, William Wells, "The Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave" in Andrews, William L. and Henry Louis Gates Jr. (eds.) The Civitas Anthology of African American Slave Narratives (Civitas, 1999).
• Brown, William Wells The Travels of William Wells Brown Paul Jefferson, (ed.)(Edinburgh University Press, 1991).
• Buckmaster, Henrietta Let My People Go (Univ. of South Carolina Press, reprint 1992).
• Farrison, William Edward William Wells Brown: Author and Reformer (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1969).
• Horton, James Oliver Free People of Color. Inside the African American Community (Smithsonian Institution, 1993).

When slavehunters recaptured this fugitive slave in Boston in 1854, the case set off a storm of protest about the Fugitive Slave Law. Abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson led an unsuccessful attempt to free Burns, during which a deputy was killed. The trial proceeded under heavy military presence. After the court ruled that Burns must be returned to slavery in Virginia, it took a battalion of artillery to escort him out of town amidst protesters.

The case heightened feelings about slavery in Boston and throughout the country. One Bostonian described the effect this way: "We went to bed one night old fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists."

Shortly, Burns returned to Boston. Some of the abolitionists had worked together to purchase his freedom. He studied for two years at Oberlin College, then transferred to Fairmount Theological Seminary in Cincinnati. Ordained a Baptist minister, Burns went to Ontario to work among the fugitives.

For younger readers

• Hamilton, Virginia Anthony Burns: The Defeat and Triumph of a Fugitive Slave (Mass Market, 1993).
• Smith, Carter (ed.), Prelude to War (Millbrook Press, 1993).

For older readers:

• Buckmaster, Henrietta Let My People Go (Univ. of South Carolina Press, reprint 1992).
• Johnson, Charles; Patricia Smith; and the WGBH Series Research Team, Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery (Harcourt Brace, 1998).
• Von Frank, Albert J. The Trials of Anthony Burns: Freedom and Slavery in Emerson's Boston (Harvard Univ. Press, 1998).

She was the oldest of 13 children born to free Blacks in Wilmington, Delaware. Her father sold subscriptions to William Lloyd Garrison's newspaper, The Liberator. Mary Ann became one of the first Black newspaperwomen in the U.S. and the first Black female editor in North America. She was a frequent speaker at abolitionist meetings and eventually earned a law degree at Howard University.

After moving to Canada, she wrote a pamphlet, Notes on Canada West, that told of the advantages of living in Canada's freedom. She opened a school in Canada for children of the escaped slaves.

Her life inspired a host of young Black women to work for education and reform.

For older readers:

• Asante, Molefi K. and Mark T. Mattson, Historical and Cultural Atlas of African Americans (Macmillan, 1991).
• Horton, James Oliver Free People of Color. Inside the African American Community (Smithsonian Institution, 1993).
• Rhodes, Jane Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century (Indiana Univ. Press, 1999).
• Ripley, C. Peter, ed., Witness for Freedom. African American voices on race, slavery and emancipation (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1993).

This American minister was born into a Rhode Island family divided over slavery. Called the "Apostle of Unitarianism," Channing advocated tolerance in religion. Although he tried to avoid controversy, he found himself addressing the major issues of his day, including slavery, war, labor problems, and education. His work influenced American authors such as Emerson and exponents of Transcendentalism including Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Channing's maternal grandfather was an opponent of slavery and a signer of the Declaration of Independence for Rhode Island. However, his father, William Channing, was the first US District Attorney for Rhode Island and many times elected Attorney General of Rhode Island. In this position, Channing Sr. often defended the interests of slave traders.

As a 12-year-old observing his uncle's trial for slave trading, young William formed a hatred of slavery that continued throughout his life. His earliest writings on slavery were said to have allowed middle class New Englanders to consider and discuss the subject. In 1840, his antislavery preaching had vexed enough of his wealthy congregation, many of whom were textile manufacturers, that he had to leave the pulpit in Boston's Federal Street congregation.

For older readers:

• Robinson, David (ed.) William Ellery Channing: Selected Writings. Sources of American Spirituality series. (Paulist Press, 1985).
• Mendelsohn, Jack Channing: the Reluctant Radical (Greenwood Press, 1980).

This well known author of books for children became a crusader against slavery. Her 1833 pamphlet, "An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans," was one of the earliest pieces of writing by a White person that pointed out racism in the North.

She encouraged White women to visit African American women in their homes and receive them in their own. She also urged them to walk with them in the streets and sit next to them in churches. These were bold ideas at the time, and as a result, her children's books no longer found such a wide readership.

For younger readers

• Katz, William Lorenz A History of Multicultural America. The Westward Movement and Abolitionism (Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 1993).

For older readers:

• Asante, Molefi K. and Mark T. Mattson Historical and Cultural Atlas of African Americans (Macmillan, 1991).
• Lowance, Mason (ed.) Against Slavery. An Abolitionist Reader (Penguin, 2000).

This African man, originally named Sengbe Pieh, led a revolt against the slave ship Amistad. Cinque was a powerful presence in the court trial that eventually won the Africans their freedom.

He had been abducted in Sierra Leone in 1839 along with many others. Slave trading among nations had been outlawed in the United States since 1808, but that didn't stop smugglers. These particular slave smugglers landed in Cuba and changed the names of the Africans left on board (many died in the passage) to European names with false papers in order to sell them legally. Pieh's name was changed to Joseph Cinque and he was purchased by Jose Ruiz and put aboard the Amistad, a Baltimore-built schooner.

Cinque used a nail to pick the lock around his neck and quietly freed the others. They took charge of the ship and forced Ruiz and his partner, Montes, to sail back to Africa. Ruiz and Montes tricked the Africans, however, sailing toward the rising sun during the day, but then switching back west at night. They reached land in Connecticut and Cinque and the other Africans were captured and put on trial. After two trials in lower courts, the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

John Quincy Adams, the 73-year-old former president and staunch abolitionist, represented the Africans in court. He compared Cinque's actions in freeing himself to those of heroes who rose up against tyrants in ancient Greece and Rome. Despite the fact that five of the Supreme Court justices were slaveholders, Cinque and his companions were freed.

Cinque began speaking out against slavery at abolitionist meetings. He told the story of what happened to them. Even though he could speak English by this time, he told the tale in Mende. These speaking appearances helped pay for the Africans' voyage back to Africa, where they arrived in January, 1842.

For younger readers

• Kromer, Helen Amistad : The Slave Uprising Aboard the Spanish Schooner (Pilgrim Press, 1997).
• Hakim, Joy Liberty for All? (Oxford Univ. Press, 1994).
• McKissack, Patricia and McKissack, Frederick Rebels Against Slavery: American Slave Revolts (Scholastic, 1996).
• Myers, Walter Dean Amistad: A Long Road to Freedom (Dreamworks, 1998).

For older readers:

• Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem and Alan Steinburg Black Profiles in Courage (William Morrow & Co., 1996).
• Osagie, Iyunolu Folayan and Lyunolu Folayan The Amistad Revolt : Memory, Slavery, and the Politics of Identity in the United States and Sierra Leone (Univ. Of Georgia Press, 2000).

In Fountain City, Indiana, Levi and Catherine Coffin opened a store/manufacturing plant and began to help fugitive slaves escape to freedom. Their zealous antislavery sentiment and involvement in helping runaways earned Levi the nickname "president" of the Underground Railroad.

Devout Quakers, the Coffins made their home into a well-known "safe house" for escaping slaves. In 1847, they moved east to Cincinnati and opened a warehouse that handled goods produced by free - not slave - labor.

During and after the Civil War, the Coffins were important figures in the Western Freedmen's Aid Society, which helped educate slaves. Levi's lectures and efforts in England and Europe raised more than $100,000 in one year. Levi died in 1877 and is buried in Cincinnati's Spring Grove Cemetery.

For younger readers

• Cosner, Sharon The Underground Railroad (Franklin Watts, 1991).
• Hamilton, Virginia Many Thousands Gone: from Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1993).
• Haskins, Jim Get on Board: The Story of the Underground Railroad (Scholastic, 1993).
• Swain, Gwyneth and Ralph L. Ramstad, illus. President of the Underground Railroad: A Story about Levi Coffin (Carrolrhoda Books, 2000).
• Wisehart, Randall A Winding Road to Freedom (Friends United, 1999).

For older readers:

• Coffin, Levi Reminiscences of Levi Coffin (Robert Clarke and Co., 1876).

Other resources

• The Coffins' Indiana home is open to the public. For information, call 765.847.2432; Box 77, Fountain City, Indiana 47341.

This Unitarian minister was an outspoken critic of slavery despite the fact that his father was a slaveholder in Virginia. A friend of Emerson and other antislavery thinkers of the time, Conway was forced to leave the church he was serving in Washington, DC, because of his forceful abolitionist views.

While serving in a Cincinnati church, Conway traveled to Virginia to accompany his father's slaves to freedom, settling them in Yellow Springs, Ohio. In 1862 he became co-editor in Boston of The Commonwealth, an antislavery paper.

During the Civil War he lectured throughout England on behalf of the North. He continued his involvement in peace movements and writing until his death in 1907.

For older readers:

• Buckmaster, Henrietta Let My People Go (Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1992).
• Chittenden, Elizabeth Profiles in Black and White: Stories of Men and Women who Fought against Slavery (Scribners, 1973).
• Conway, Moncure Autobiography (1904).
• d'Entremont, John Southern Emancipator: Moncure Conway: The American Years, 1832-1865 (Oxford Univ. Press, 1987).

As a 23-year-old, Copeland wrote a final letter to his parents before being put to death for his part in the 1859 raid led by John Brown on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. He wrote: "I am not terrified by the gallows upon which I am soon to stand and suffer death for doing what George Washington was made a hero for."

The five African Americans who took part in the raid have been largely ignored by history. Copeland, a free man, had studied at Oberlin College. His uncle, Lewis Leary, and he had been involved in the rescue of fugitive John Price in what has become known as the "Oberlin Wellington Rescue." (See John Price.)

Copeland wrote that he had joined Brown to "assist in giving that freedom to at least a few of my poor and enslaved brethren who have been most foully and unjustly deprived of their liberty."

Copeland was hung along with Shields Green who had escaped slavery in Charleston, South Carolina. Killed during the raid were Lewis Leary and Dangerfield Newby, who had been freed by his white master/father but who was trying to free his wife and seven children, still enslaved. The only African American involved in the abortive raid who survived was Osborne Perry Anderson.

For younger readers

• Barrett, Tracy Harpers Ferry. The Story of John Brown's Raid (Milbrook Press, 1993).
• McKissack, Patricia and McKissack, Frederick Rebels Against Slavery: American Slave Revolts (Scholastic, 1996).

For older readers:

• Brandt, Nat The Town that Started the Civil War (Syracuse University Press, 1990).
• Johnson, Charles, Patricia Smith, and the WGBH Series Research Team Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery (Harcourt Brace, 1998).
• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford Univ. Press, 1969).
• Time Life Books African Americans: Voices of Triumph. Perseverance (1993).

Cornish was born a free African American in Delaware in 1797. He went to Free African Schools in Philadelphia and then on to Princeton University.

He founded the first Negro newspaper, Freedom's Journal in 1827. It was actually the first of a string of papers that Cornish published, including Rights of All in 1829, Weekly Advocate in 1836, and with Charles B. Ray and Phillip A. Bell, The Colored American in 1837. The papers played important roles in discussing the evils of slavery and the need for emancipation.

A Presbyterian minister, Rev. Cornish helped organize the First Colored (Shiloh) Presbyterian Church in New York City in the early 1820s.

For older readers:

• Christian, Charles M. Black Saga: The African American Experience (Houghton Mifflin, 1995).
• Franklin, John Hope and Alfred A. Moss Jr. From Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1988).
• Ripley, C. Peter (ed.) Witness for Freedom. African American voices on race, slavery and emancipation (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1993).

This couple assumed false identities and managed to escape. In 1848, Ellen, the child of a slave and her owner, disguised herself as a man traveling with his slave, who actually was William, her husband. She was light-skinned and could "pass" as a White person. Cleverly, they even figured a way to avoid having Ellen sign her name, since she couldn't read or write. She pretended to have broken her arm, so when they registered at a hotel, the hotel keeper signed for her.

Their 1,000-mile trip from Macon, Georgia, to Boston was full of danger and several times they narrowly missed being discovered. After the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, they left the United States for Canada and from there went to Britain and true freedom.

For younger readers

• Fradin, Dennis B. Bound for the North Star: True Stories of Fugitive Slaves(Houghton Mifflin, 2000) Reading level: Young Adult
• Freedman, Florence B.; Ezra Jack Keats (Illustrator) Two Tickets to Freedom: The True Story of Ellen and William Craft, Fugitive Slaves (Peter Bedrick Books, reissue edition,1989). Reading level: Ages 9-12
• Gorrell, Gena K. North Star to Freedom: The Story of the Underground Railroad (Delacorte, 1996).
• Hakim, Joy Liberty for All? (Oxford Univ. Press, 1994).
• Haskins, Jim Get on Board: The Story of the Underground Railroad (Scholastic, 1993)
• Katz, William Loren Breaking the Chains: African American Slave Resistance (Atheneum, 1990).
• National Park Service Underground Railroad (Department of the Interior, 1998).
• Rappaport, Doreen Escape from Slavery. Five Journeys to Freedom (HarperCollins, 1991).
• Sawyer, Kem Knapp The Underground Railroad in American History (Enslow Publishers, 1997).

For older readers:

• Craft, William Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (W. Tweedie, 1860).
• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford Univ. Press, 1969).
• Time-Life Books Perseverance: African American Voices of Triumph (1993).
• Young, Mary and Gerald Horne Testaments of Courage: Selections from Men's Slave Narratives (Franklin Watts, 1995).
• White, Deborah Gray Let My People Go. African Americans 1804-1860 (Oxford Univ. Press, 1996).

In 1832 this Quaker teacher caused a storm of protest when she allowed a young African American woman to attend her Connecticut school, Canterbury Academy for Women. When White parents removed their daughters in protest, Crandall enrolled more African American women. The town rebelled -- neighbors talked of poisoning her well and refused to sell her supplies. Finally the town passed a law against the school, threatening her with arrest.

She was arrested and convicted after three trials in which the jury could not come up with a decision. Finally, when the judge instructed the jury that Blacks were not U.S. citizens, the jury convicted her. The case set legal precedent for Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney's decision in the Dred Scott case.

When her case was set aside, Crandall moved to Illinois where she kept on teaching.

For younger readers

• Katz, William Loren A History of Multicultural America. The Westward Movement and Abolitionism (Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 1993).

For older readers:

• Christian, Charles M. Black Saga: The African American Experience (Houghton Mifflin, 1995).

In the years from 1836 - 1855, Cratty is said to have helped 3,000 slaves escape. This man from Central Ohio was reportedly upset by seeing a fugitive on whose neck was an iron band with points that curved up and over his head.

Southern slaveholders offered a $3,000 award for him delivered dead or alive below the Mason-Dixon line.

For older readers:

• Buckmaster, Henrietta Let My People Go (Univ. of South Carolina Press, reprint 1992).

This friend and colleague of Frederick Douglass became the first African American commissioned major in the Union Army. He also wrote novels, practiced medicine, and called for Black solidarity. Delany co-edited Douglass's North Star newspaper.

The same year as Uncle Tom's Cabin was published, Delany wrote The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the U.S. Politically Considered.

Delany, a freeborn African American, advocated emigrating to Africa in the 1850s. In Reconstruction, he worked with the Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina.

For younger readers

• Gorrell, Gena K. North Star to Freedom: The Story of the Underground Railroad (Delacorte, 1996).
• Hansen, Joyce Between 2 Fires: Black Soldiers in the Civil War (Franklin Watts, 1993).

For older readers:

• Blackett, R. J. M. Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860 (Louisiana State Press, 1983).
• Horton, James Oliver Free People of Color. Inside the African American Community (Smithsonian Institution, 1993).
• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford Univ. Press, 1969).

Frederick Douglass was born Frederick Baily on Holmes Hill Farm near Easton on Maryland's Eastern Shore. His grandmother raised him since his mother, Harriet Baily, worked long hours in the field. Growing up, he heard rumors that the White master, Aaron Anthony, was his father.

At age six, Frederick was taken from his grandmother to live with his brother and two sisters under terrible conditions. He later wrote of eating cornmeal mush from a trough, "like so many pigs." In 1826 he was sent to live with Hugh Auld, who managed a shipbuilding firm in Baltimore. At the Auld home, he ran errands and cared for their infant son. Mrs. Auld taught him the alphabet and a few basic words, but the lessons stopped when Hugh Auld found out. (It was against the law for slaves to be taught to read.)

Because Frederick understood that reading was a key to freedom, he would give pieces of bread to entice poor White children to teach him to read. He used the little money he earned doing errands to buy a copy of the Columbian Orator, a collection of speeches about liberty and courage. Soon he was reading newspapers and learning of the abolitionists. He had started teaching other young Blacks and became close to a Black preacher, Charles Lawson. Once again, however, his life was disrupted. This time he was sent to St. Michaels, Maryland, where he suffered numerous beatings and witnessed many more.

Sent to work for Edward Covey, known as an expert "slave breaker," Frederick was repeatedly beaten until one day he fought back. Although he could have been killed for resisting, the "slave breaker" didn't want his reputation hurt by a 16-year-old whom he could not control.

Frederick desperately wanted his freedom. He started an illegal school for Blacks, secretly meeting in the evenings and on Sundays. He also started planning his escape. The escape was foiled, however, and he was returned to Hugh Auld in Baltimore. There he was hired out to a shipbuilder to learn the trade of caulking - making a ship watertight. He became quite skilled and eventually earned the highest possible wages for a tradesman at his level. Frederick resented having to give almost all of his earnings to his master.

He joined with other educated Blacks in an organization called the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society, where he met his future wife, Anna Murray. Despite his relatively comfortable life in Baltimore, he vowed to escape slavery and did so by dressing as a seaman and carrying falsified papers on a train to Wilmington, Delaware, then a steamboat to Philadelphia and another train to New York City. Eventually Anna joined him and they moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he heard abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison speak in 1841.

Then and there Frederick decided he would crusade for slavery's abolition. He began to lecture tirelessly for the American Anti-Slavery Society. Frederick's speaking skills and his personal perspectives on slavery brought huge audiences and widespread notoriety. He earned the reputation as the "Lion of God."

In 1845, he wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. The book became a bestseller but also put him in danger as it brought attention to his status as an escaped slave. He traveled to England where he won further acclaim and the support of two British admirers who raised money to buy Douglass' freedom. He returned to the U.S. as a free man.

Moving to Rochester, New York, with his wife and children, he began publishing the North Star, his own Black-managed abolitionist newspaper. He championed women's suffrage and spoke at the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848.

Because their Rochester home was on the route to Canada and because of their hatred of slavery, he and Anna became involved in the Underground Railroad during the 1850s. He often found fugitives waiting for him outside the North Star office. During these years, the Douglass family sheltered and fed dozens of escaped slaves.

During the Civil War, Douglass lectured and lobbied for emancipation and for the right of Blacks to enlist in the Union army. Both came true.

For the remainder of his life, Frederick Douglass worked to secure justice and uphold the rights of all oppressed people. He held several political offices, including minister to Haiti under President Benjamin Harrison. He died on February 20th, 1895, in his Washington, DC home, Cedar Hill.

For younger readers

• Jackson, Garnet Frederick Douglass: Freedom Fighter (Modern Curriculum Press, 1992). Reading level: ages 4-8.
• McKissack, Patricia Frederick Douglass: Leader Against Slavery (Great African American Series) (Enslow Publishers, 1991). Reading level: ages 4-8.
• McLoone, Margo Frederick Douglass: A Photo-Illustrated Biography (Bridgestone Books, 1997).
• Miller, William Frederick Douglass: The Last Day of Slavery (Lee and Low Books, 1998). Reading level: ages 4-8.
• Passaro, John Frederick Douglass (Child's World, 1999).
• Schomp, Virginia He Fought for Freedom: Frederick Douglass (Benchmark Books, 1997).
• Sharman, Russell and Nathan I. Higgins Frederick Douglass (Black Americans of Achievement series), (Chelsea House, 1989). Reading level: 9-12 years.

For older readers:

• Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass' Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (1991).
• Gates, Henry Louis (ed.) Frederick Douglass: Autobiographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave/ My Bondage and My Freedom/ Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Library of America, 1994).
• Meltzer, Milton(ed.) illustrated by Stephen Acorn Frederick Douglass in His Own Words (Harcourt Brace, 1995).

Other resources

The Frederick Douglass National Historic site is located at:
1411 W Street SE
Washington DC 20020-4813
202.426.5961

www.nps.gov/frdo

In 1848 Drayton, an Irish American college student, tried to help 75 armed Kentucky slaves cross the Ohio River to freedom. They were all caught. Three of the Black leaders were executed. Doyle, from Danville, Ohio, was given 20 years in jail.

This attempt at a massive escape was one of numerous armed slave uprisings that received little public attention, perhaps to keep the information from encouraging other slaves.

For younger readers

• Katz, William Loren Breaking the Chains: African American Slave Resistance (Atheneum, 1990).

Not all escape attempts were successful. Daniel Drayton, a ship captain, was involved in a widely publicized attempt that failed. In 1847, he sailed his ship, "The Pearl," into the harbor of Washington, D.C., to unload oysters. While at the dock, a Black man asked him to take a woman and her five children north. She had paid a substantial sum to her owner for her freedom, but the owner refused to grant her freedom and vowed, instead, to send her further south. Captain Drayton agreed and successfully completed the first of many trips with fugitive slaves aboard.

In the following year, however, his good luck ran out. While their owners were celebrating in Washington festivities, 78 slaves found their way to Captain Drayton's ship. They sailed at midnight before anything was noticed and proceeded until bad weather forced them to stop about 150 miles up the Potomac from Washington. The delay gave the slaveowners a chance to figure out what happened and follow "The Pearl," overtaking it and forcing it back to port.

The captain and his crew were indicted and jailed. They ended up serving four years before winning a pardon from President Millard Fillmore. The slaves, however, fared much worse. They were sold and resold, shipped and sent to parts unknown.

For younger readers

• Hamilton, Virginia Many Thousands Gone: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom Illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon (Knopf, 1993).
• Sawyer, Kem Knapp The Underground Railroad in American History (Enslow Publishers, 1997).

For older readers:

• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford Univ. Press, 1969).

In 1756 the young son and daughter of an Ibo tribal elder in what is now Nigeria were kidnapped for the slave trade. The children were separated and Equiano was led on a 7-month journey to the west coast of Africa. There he was taken on a slave ship and sold to a Virginia plantation owner. Later Equiano was sold to a British naval officer and a slaveholding Quaker.

He learned to read and write English and picked up some European business skills. In 1766, Equiano purchased his own freedom.

Equiano told of his experiences in The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano published in 1789 in London. It is one of the few accounts of the horrible nature of the middle passage -- the 5-12 week voyage from Africa to the Americas.

For younger readers

• Cameron, Ann The Kidnapped Prince: The Life of Olaudah Equiano (Random House, 2000). Reading level: Ages 9-12.

For older readers:

• Equiano, Olaudah (ed.) Mary Rowlandson, Gordon M. Sayre (ed.), Paul Lauter(ed.) American Captivity Narratives: Selected Narratives With Introduction New Riverside Editions (Mariner Books, 2000).
• Time Life Books African Americans: Voices of Triumph. Perseverance (1993).
• Walven, James An African's Life, 1745-1797: The Life and Times of Olaudah Equiano The Black Atlantic Series (Continuum, 2000).

Wilson and his brother Henry were free Black men from North Carolina who worked as cabinetmakers in Oberlin, Ohio. They helped fugitive slave John Price in what became known as the "Oberlin-Wellington Rescue."

The Evans brothers served time in jail for their part in the rescue. When the Civil War broke out, the light-skinned Wilson Bruce enlisted in the Union army, never revealing that he was African American. He died in 1898, only a few days after the 40th anniversary of the rescue.

Henry died in 1886.

For older readers:

• Brandt, Nat The Town that Started the Civil War (Syracuse University Press, 1990).

A minister, Rev. Fairbanks wrote an account of his life that describes his activities on the Underground Railroad. He wrote of helping people ... "through forests, mostly by night; men in women's clothes and women in men's clothes; boys dressed as girls, and girls as boys; on foot or on horseback, in buggies, carriages, common wagons, in and under loads of hay, straw, old furniture, boxes and bags; ...swimming or wading chin deep; or in boats, or skiffs; on rafts, and often on a pine log. And I never suffered one to be recaptured."

One of those whom he helped was Lewis Hayden, who went on to harbor fugitives in his house and to serve as a prominent abolitionist. Unfortunately, Rev. Fairbanks did not escape being captured. In 1844, he was tried and imprisoned for 17 years for aiding and abetting fugitive slaves.

For younger readers

• Gorrell, Gina K. North Star to Freedom (Delacorte, 1996).
• Meltzer, Milton Underground Man (Bradbury, 1972). Fiction based on Fairbanks' life.

For older readers:

• Buckmaster, Henrietta Let My People Go (Univ. of South Carolina Press, reprint 1992).
• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford Univ. Press, 1969).

The son of wealthy Virginians, Fairfield hated slavery. He began a successful 12-year career in helping fugitives escape when he escorted one of his father's slaves north. In all, he is thought to have helped several hundred fugitives find their freedom.

Fairfield posed as a slaveholder or peddler, convincing Southerners so completely that he was not suspected. On one of his trips, he led 28 people to freedom by staging a fake funeral. Fairfield put one fugitive in a coffin and directed the others to act as mourners. The funeral procession proceeded without interruption.

Fairfield is said to have taken some of the fugitives to Levi Coffin and to have traveled with others to Canada. He continued to go into the South to help fugitives until 1860, when he was reportedly killed in a slave revolt in Tennessee.

For younger readers

• Cosner, Sharon The Underground Railroad (Franklin Watts, 1991).
• Haskins, Jim Get on Board: The Story of the Underground Railroad (Scholastic, 1993).
• Paulson, Timothy J. Days of Sorrow, Years of Glory 1830-1850 (Chelsea House Publishers, 1994).

For older readers:

• Franklin, John Hope and Alfred A. Moss Jr. From Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1988).

This family of free African Americans lived on a farm in Pennsylvania near the boundary of slave territory. They never officially declared themselves to be abolitionists. Their descendant, Pauli Murray (a lawyer who became one of the first women to be ordained an Episcopal priest) reports that "They were not joiners of reform movements but they were stubborn in what they believed to be right."

The family is reported to have frequently harbored fugitives in their barn and offered food for their journeys.

For older readers:

• Murray, Pauli Proud Shoes: the Story of an American Family (1956; reprinted Harper & Row, 1978).
• Horton, James Oliver Free People of Color. Inside the African American Community (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993).

Charlotte was the wife of abolitionist James Forten. As the oldest child of Charlotte and James Forten, Margaretta grew up surrounded by antislavery feelings and actions. In addition to starting a school for Black children, she was a smart businesswoman. When her father died in 1842, she helped manage his estate.

Both mother and daughter wanted to join the American Antislavery Society that James Forten helped found, but no women were allowed. Together with some other women, they started a new group, the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. This group of Black and White women opposed slavery and believed in equality of the sexes as well. Other founding members included Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

For older readers:

• Christian, Charles M. Black Saga: The African American Experience(Houghton Mifflin, 1995).
• Time Life Books African Americans: Voices of Triumph. Perseverance(1993).

The son of a free African who had bought his wife's freedom, Forten attended school in Philadelphia. At 14, he joined the U.S. naval forces in the Revolutionary War. He returned to Philadelphia, worked at the same sailmaking firm his father had, and did so well there that in 1798 he bought the company.

With some of his wealth he supported such antislavery causes as William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. Forten was also a writer himself, having penned Letters from a Man of Color in 1813, an early attack on harsh laws against Blacks.

His daughter Margaretta was one of the founders of the Female Anti-Slavery Society which was organized in Philadelphia in 1833. Forten's granddaughter, Charlotte, taught in a free school for African American children near Ft. Wagner, South Carolina, during the Civil War.

For younger readers

• Haskins, Jim Get on Board: The Story of the Underground Railroad(Scholastic, 1993).
• Myers, Walter Dean Now is Your Time. The African-American Struggle for Freedom (Harper Collins, 1991).

For older readers:

• Asante, Molefi K. and Mark T. Mattson Historical and Cultural Atlas of African Americans (Macmillan, 1991).
• Horton, James Oliver Free People of Color. Inside the African American Community (Smithsonian Institution, 1993).
• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford University Press, 1969).
• Time Life Books African Americans: Voices of Triumph. Perseverance (1993).

This "fiery little Irish Quaker" became a speaker for the antislavery cause. A teacher in Lynn, Massachusetts, Abby Kelly heard William Lloyd Garrison speak. She then began meeting other local people involved in the abolitionist cause. She joined the Female Anti-Slavery Society in Lynn and started raising money and taking petitions door to door for the group.

At that time women were discouraged from speaking in public to groups of men and women. When Kelly dared to do so at a meeting in Philadelphia, she was shouted at and booed. Prominent abolitionist Theodore Weld appreciated her courage and her competence, inviting her to join the speaking circuit. She did so in 1839 and promptly sparked a division between the American Anti-Slavery Society led by Garrison and the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society led by Lewis Tappan.

Foster traveled throughout New England, appearing with Frederick Douglass and other famous abolitionists. In 1845 she began publishing an antislavery newspaper, the Anti-Slavery Bugle, to provide news of the movement to people in Ohio. She married fellow abolitionist Stephen Foster in 1845. They continued to work against slavery and may have harbored fugitive slaves in their Worcester, Massachusetts, home.

For older readers:

• Buckmaster, Henrietta Let My People Go (Univ. of South Carolina Press, reprint 1992).
• National Park Service www.nps.gov/boaf/foster~1.htm

Henry and his family escaped to New York City in 1825 in a daring venture. After he had heard that his family would be split up and sold, Henry's father arranged for passes to attend a funeral. Instead, the family used the time to escape.

While Henry was at work one day, bounty hunters tracked down his family. They managed to escape to "safe houses" on Long Island, but Henry returned from work to find his entire family gone. Eventually the family was reunited, but Henry's hatred of the slave system grew.

He attended the New York African Free School where he soon became known for his intelligence. He and two other students walked all the way to Canaan, New Hampshire, to enroll in Noyes Academy, only to find that local farmers wrecked the school because it admitted African Americans. Henry and the others escaped back to New York. Later he studied at Oneida Theological School in Whiteboro, New York, and became a frequent speaker at abolitionist meetings.

An ordained Presbyterian minister, he served a racially mixed congregation in Troy, New York. David Walker's writings moved him a great deal and he visited Walker's widow in Boston. He began calling for African Americans to organize their resistance and take up arms.

In editing an 1848 version of David Walker's "Appeal," Henry told the slaves that "You had far better all die - die immediately, than to live slaves and entail your wretchedness upon your posterity."

For younger readers

• Katz, William Loren Breaking the Chains: African American Slave Resistance (Atheneum, 1990).
• McKissack, Patricia and McKissack, Frederick Rebels Against Slavery: American Slave Revolts (Scholastic, 1996).
• Myers, Walter Dean Now is Your Time. The African-American Struggle for Freedom (Harper Collins, 1991).

For older readers:

• Blackett R. J. M. Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860 (Louisiana State Press, 1983).
• Buckmaster, Henrietta Let My People Go (Univ. of South Carolina Press, reprint 1992).
• Johnson, Charles; Patricia Smith; and the WGBH Series Research Team Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1998).
• McPherson, James M. The Struggle for Equality (Princeton Univ. Press, 1992).
• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford University Press, 1969).
• Ripley, C. Peter (ed.) Witness for Freedom. African American voices on race, slavery and emancipation (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1993).
• Time Life Books African Americans: Voices of Triumph. Perseverance (1993).

In 1820 Thomas Garrett made a decision that changed his life and that of thousands of escaping slaves. He decided to spend his life working for the abolition of slavery.

This iron seller was a Quaker who believed that slavery was against God's law. His house in Wilmington, Delaware, was strategically located. Slaves fleeing up the East coast would find shelter with him as their last stop before the free state of Pennsylvania. Garrett is said to have helped some 2,700 fugitives reach freedom.

Repeatedly, slaveholders and those who supported slavery threatened him with violence. Fined for his role in aiding fugitive slaves and forced to sell all his property, Garrett is reported to have told Judge Roger B. Taney, (Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court who issued the Dred Scott decision): "Thou has left me without a dollar...I say to thee and to all in this court room, that if anyone knows a fugitive who wants shelter...send him to Thomas Garrett and he will befriend him."

After the Civil War, the African Americans of Wilmington hailed Thomas Garrett as "Our Moses."

For younger readers

• Bentley, Judith "Dear Friend," Thomas Garret and William Still, collaborators on the underground railroad (Cobblehill Books, 1997).
• Gorrell, Gina K. North Star to Freedom(Delacorte, 1996)
• Haskins, Jim Get on Board: The Story of the Underground Railroad (Scholastic,1993).
• Sawyer, Kem Knapp The Underground Railroad in American History (Enslow Publishers, 1997)

For older readers:

• Still, William, The Underground Railroad (Arno Press & The New York Times, 1968).

Other Web resources

• www.state.de.us/facts/history/garrbio.htm

This abolitionist lived in Massachusetts. In 1831, he established The Liberator, a newspaper that gave voice to those who opposed slavery. The paper became the most important reform newspaper of the period. It found a ready market among Black abolitionists: in the first year, 400 of the 450 subscriptions were from Blacks. That same year Garrison also helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society, the largest such organization in the country.

Often strident, Garrison was determined to erase slavery. Of The Liberator, Garrison said: "I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice ... AND I WILL BE HEARD."

On at least one occasion, Garrison publicly burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution, terming it "a covenant with hell" since it accepted slavery.

He worked for other causes of the time, as well, including women's rights and temperance. His speeches were not always welcomed. In 1835, an angry mob threw a rope around his neck and dragged him through the streets in his hometown of Boston.

For younger readers

• Katz, William Loren Breaking the Chains: African-American Slave Resistance (Atheneum, 1990)
• Katz, William Loren A History of Multicultural America. The Westward Movement and Abolitionism (Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 1993).
• Paulson, Timothy J. Days of Sorrow, Years of Glory 1830-1850 (Chelsea House Publishers, 1994).
• Smith, Carter (ed.) Prelude to War (Millbrook Press, 1993).

For older readers:

• Franklin, John Hope and Alfred A. Moss Jr. From Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1988).
• Mayer, Henry All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (St. Martins, 1998).
• Newman, Richard and Marcia Sawyer Everybody Say Freedom (Penguin, 1996).

This printer used his trade to help fugitives. He kept on file a large number of so-called "free papers" from African Americans who had died. Gibbs gave these papers to fugitives so they could use them to conceal their true identity. In this way, he is said to have helped some 2,000 fugitives.

For older readers:

• National Park Service, Underground Railroad (Department of the Interior, 1998).

Grimes had a first-hand view of slavery, not as a slave himself but as an employee of a slave trader in the South. When he bought a buggy shop in Washington, DC, he made good use of it to help enslaved people escape. After a handful of successful efforts, this free Black man was captured and sentenced to a Richmond prison for two years for his part in trying to rescue a slave family.

Prison, however, did nothing to dampen his passion for helping runaways. After being released, Grimes moved to Boston where he served as a minister of the Twelfth Baptist Church, known as the "fugitive slave church." When fugitive slave Anthony Burns was captured in Boston and forced to return to slavery, Grimes organized an effort to purchase Burns's freedom.

For younger readers

• Hamilton, Virginia Many Thousands Gone: from Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1993).
• National Park Service Underground Railroad (Department of the Interior, 1998).

For older readers:

• Bontemps, Arna W. (ed.) Five Black Lives: The Autobiographies of Venture Smith, James Mars, William Grimes, the Rev. G.W. Offley and James L. Smith (Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1971).
• Collison, Gary Shadrach Minkins From Fugitive Slave to Citizen (Harvard Univ. Press, 1997).
• Horton, James Oliver Free People of Color. Inside the African American Community (Smithsonian Institution, 1993).
• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford University Press, 1969).

These sisters were among the first people to link abolitionism with women's rights. They came from a South Carolina family that owned slaves. Sarah secretly taught slaves to read and write.

They moved to Philadelphia, became Quakers, and began speaking out against slavery. Eventually they undertook a 9-month speaking tour of 67 towns and cities. Some people who heard them had never before witnessed a woman speaking in public. Even among abolitionists, some people were not pleased to have women hold positions in the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Angelina eventually married abolitionist Theodore Weld.

For younger readers

• Katz, William Loren A History of Multicultural America 1815-1850 (Steck-Vaughn, 1993)
• Todras, Ellen H. Angelina Grimke: Voice of Abolition (Linnet, 1999) Young adult.

For older readers:

• Buckmaster, Henrietta Let My People Go (Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1992)
• Lerner, Gilda The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina: Pioneers for Women's Rights and Abolition (Oxford Univ. Press, 1998).
• Miller, William Lee Arguing About Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress (Vintage, 1998).

Born in Barbados, Prince Hall was the son of a White man and a free woman of African and French descent. He emigrated to Boston, working on a ship. In Boston, he found work, owned property, and became a qualified voter. He also fought in the Revolutionary War against England.

Having taught himself to read and write, Hall urged his fellow African Americans to better themselves, too, through education and protest. Along with 14 other Blacks, Hall founded the Negro Masonic Order, the first African American self-help fraternal organization in the U.S. The Order became an important organization within the Black community and branches followed in Providence, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Maryland.

He denounced slavery and the discrimination practiced daily against Blacks in Boston. Hall worked hard to convince the state legislature to end the slave trade.

Hall's son, Primus, worked in many of the same causes his father had stressed. A separate Black school met in his Beacon Hill home beginning in 1798. Primus helped found the African Baptist Church, the first Black church in Boston.

For older readers:

• Christian, Charles M. Black Saga: The African American Experience (Houghton Mifflin, 1995).
• Horton, James Oliver Free People of Color. Inside the African American Community (Smithsonian Institution, 1993).

Enslaved on a farm in Bramlette County, Kentucky she served as house-keeper and cook for the slave master, and mother to Mallard Hill, Alfred Hill, Louis Hill.

For adult readers

• Britton, Vernieda I. Hill Family Bible. U.S. Census, 1870, 1880. 1900.

This poet and lecturer was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to free African American parents. After moving first to Ohio and then to Pennsylvania, she learned about the Underground Railroad and started writing about it in her poetry. As she became more interested in the process of helping enslaved people find freedom, she offered her help in terms of food, money and clothing. She also helped the cause by giving lectures on the importance of abolishing slavery and promoting education.

One of her poems, "A Mother's Heroism," memorialized Elijah P. Lovejoy, an abolitionist newspaper editor murdered by a mob in Alton, Illinois, in 1837.

Among her books are Poems On Miscellaneous Subjects, (1857), Sketches of Southern Life (1872) and Moses: A Story of the Nile (1869).

For younger readers

• Sawyer, Kem Knapp The Underground Railroad in American History (Enslow Publishers, 1997).

For older readers:

• Asante, Molefi K. and Mark T. Mattson Historical and Cultural Atlas of African Americans (Macmillan, 1991).
• Meltzer, Milton The Black Americans. A History in Their Own Words (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1984).
• Ripley, C. Peter (ed.) Witness for Freedom. African American voices on race, slavery and emancipation (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1993).

Haviland founded the Raisen Institute in northern Michigan for Black and White students. The school also taught both males and females, another unusual practice at the time.

She worked with fellow Quaker Levi Coffin to help fugitive slaves escape to Canada, reportedly "braving slave-catchers' pistols on more than one occasion."

When John White, a fugitive working near the Raisen Institute, appealed for her help to bring his wife to freedom, Haviland consulted with Coffin and several of White's friends in Rising Sun, Indiana. Then she traveled to Kentucky, posed as an aunt of a free light-skinned African American woman and delivered John White's message to his wife Jane.

Tragically, the escape planned for several weeks from then was unsuccessful as a slave-catcher caught up with White, who had returned to Kentucky, and Jane. John somehow got word back to his friends in Michigan; the Cincinnati Vigilance Committee raised $400 to buy John White's freedom, but by that time his wife had died.

Laura Haviland again journeyed to Kentucky, this time returning with John White. She eventually moved to Windsor, Ontario, to teach children of former slaves.

For younger readers

• Gorrell, Gena K. North Star to Freedom: The Story of the Underground Railroad (Delacorte, 1996).

For older readers:

• Buckmaster, Henrietta Let My People Go (Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1992).

Hayden's life and work were tied with many other important conductors and abolitionists. He himself had been a slave in Kentucky. Calvin Fairbank (see his profile) was jailed for helping Hayden.

This rescue may have encouraged Hayden to help others. After reaching Canada, Hayden lived there for six months before returning to the United States and settling in Detroit.

To band together with other abolitionists, he moved his family to Boston. The Haydens' downtown Boston home was well known for harboring fugitive slaves. Today, it's a pilgrimage site on Boston's Black Heritage Trail. Once, when writer Harriet Beecher Stowe visited, she said she met 13 escaped slaves under the Haydens' roof. When William and Ellen Craft (read their profile on the Web site) escaped, they stayed in the Hayden home for a while.

This man was instrumental in the Boston Vigilance Committee. In one year, 1851, the committee recorded helping 69 fugitives. Forty-nine African Americans were on the payroll for harboring fugitives.

Hayden hated the Fugitive Slave Law and announced that he had put two kegs of explosives in his home, threatening to blow up the home rather than surrender a fugitive. It never came to that and he continued to aid fugitives personally as well as the cause of abolitionism in many courageous ways.

For younger readers

• Katz, William Loren, Breaking the Chains: African American Slave Resistance (Atheneum, 1990). Young adult.

For older readers:

• Collison, Gary Shadrach Minkins. From Fugitive Slave to Citizen (Harvard Univ. Press, 1997).
• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford Univ. Press, 1969)
• Strangis, Joel Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery (Linnet, 1999).

From the age of six, Henson was sold and resold many times. His father was brutally beaten and sold to the deep South for trying to protect Josiah's mother from the overseer. As a young man, Josiah himself was so damaged by another overseer that he could never after lift his arms to his head.

After Josiah and his sick wife and children escaped from their owner, Indians found them wandering around the wilderness of Ohio and Indiana. The Indians helped them and the family eventually made its way north to Canada and freedom.

Together, the Hensons helped other fugitives in Ohio. Josiah went back south to Kentucky to conduct others to freedom. One time he led a group of 30 people to Canada.

For younger readers

• Hamilton, Virginia Many Thousands Gone: from Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1993).
• Sawyer, Kem Knapp The Underground Railroad in American History (Enslow Publishers, 1997).

For older readers:

• Henson, Josiah Father Henson's Story of His Own Life American Biography Series.
• Johnson, Charles; Patricia Smith; and the WGBH Series Research Team Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery(Harcourt Brace, 1998).

This abolitionist and Unitarian minister commanded the first Black regiment in the Union Army.

He began speaking out against slavery after meeting some of the people Harriet Tubman brought to freedom. "I learned to speak because their presence made silence impossible," he said.

When former slave Anthony Burns was recaptured in Boston (soon after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act), Higginson led a group of Blacks and Whites on the courthouse to try to rescue Burns. Although the effort was unsuccessful, the story was widely reported and helped to turn national sentiment against the Fugitive Slave Act and slavery.

For younger readers

• Hansen, Joyce Between Two Fires: Black Soldiers in the Civil War (Franklin Watts, 1993).
• Katz, William Loren Breaking the Chains: African-American Slave Resistance (Atheneum, 1990).

For older readers:

• Higginson, Thomas W. Army Life in a Black Regiment (Time-Life Books, reprint 1982).
• Newman, Richard and Marcia Sawyer, Everybody Say Freedom (Penguin, 1996).

Born in Florida as a slave, John Horse became an important chief of the Black Seminoles. He was a ferocious warrior who fought all those who tried to take away his tribe's land and freedom. Those enemies included the US government under Gen. Zachary Taylor, Texas slave-catchers, and Mexican "filibusters."

John Horse was a man of many skills, including the ability to speak several languages. He interpreted for other tribes and negotiated with U.S. federal officials including James Polk and Ulysses Grant. He also represented his tribe in trying to obtain land in Mexico, dealing with Mexican officials in Mexico City.

In 1849, Chief Horse founded Wewoka, a city in Mexico that became a refuge for fugitive slaves.

For younger readers

• Johnson, Dolores Seminole Diary: Remembrances of a Slave Reading level: Ages 4-8 (Atheneum, 1994).
• Katz, William Loren Black Pioneers: An Untold Story (Atheneum, 1999).
• Katz, William Loren Black Indians: a Hidden Heritage (Atheneum Books, 1999).

For older readers:

• Christian, Charles M. Black Saga: The African American Experience (Houghton Mifflin, 1995).
• Mulroy, Kevin Freedom on the Border: The Seminole Maroons in Florida, the Indian Territory, Coahuila, and Texas (Texas Tech Univ. Press, 1993).
• National Park Service Underground RR Network to Freedom Newsletter, 2000.
• Porter, Kenneth W., Alcione M. Amos (ed.) Thomas P. Senter (ed.) The Black Seminoles: History of a Freedom-Seeking People (Univ. Press of Florida, 1996).

In 1833, the same year that David Walker published his momentous "Appeal," Horton wrote Hope of Liberty. A national effort was undertaken to purchase Horton's freedom from his owner in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Horton was said to be the most celebrated slave poet since Phyllis Wheatley.

For older readers:

• Franklin, John Hope and Alfred A. Moss Jr. From Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1988)
• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford University Press, 1969).

These reformers included anti-slavery among their causes. Together they edited The Commonwealth, an antislavery paper in Boston. They also are reported to have sheltered fugitive slaves in their home and raised money to keep the new Kansas territory a free state.

In addition to his pioneering work with the blind, Samuel Howe also led a group of concerned abolitionists in forming the Emancipation League to educate the public about the urgent need for emancipation, potentially as a way to end the Civil War.

Julia Howe, for her part, struggled with her husband's desire that she not become involved in public issues. She wrote poetry, including the words to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and studied philosophy.

For older readers:

• McPherson, James M. The Struggle for Equality (Princeton Univ. Press, 1992).
• Meltzer, Milton A Light in the Dark. The life of Samuel Gridley Howe (Harper Trophy).
• Stewart, James Brewer Wendell Phillips: Liberty's Hero (Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1986).
• Williams, Gary Hungry Heart: The Literary Emergence of Julia Ward Howe (Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1999).

Harriet Jacobs was born a slave in 1813 and eventually sent to live with the Norcom family of Edenton, North Carolina. After years of being mistreated and assaulted by her owner, she ran away. She found a hiding place in a tiny space above the shed next to her free grandmother's house.

Harriet later wrote of her sanctuary:

"Between these boards and the roof was a very small garret... [T]he garret was only nine feet long... the highest part three feet high... To this hole I was conveyed...[T]he air was stifling; the darkness total... The rats and mice ran over my bed."

She stayed there, friends slipping her food and drink, for almost seven years. As she wrote: "I lived in that dismal hole, almost deprived of light and air, with no space to move my limbs, for nearly seven years... Yet I would have chosen this, rather than my lot as a slave."

Harriet made a tiny hole that let her look into the street, and in 1845 she finally escaped, smuggled on a ship that sailed to New York.

Years later in 1861, she wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl using the pen name of Linda Brent. In it, she told the story of her long hiding and eventual freedom.

For younger readers

• Fleischner, Jennifer; Melanie Reim (Illustrator) I Was Born a Slave: The Story of Harriet Jacobs (Millbrook Press, 1997).
• Sawyer, Kem Knapp The Underground Railroad in American History (Enslow, 1997).

For older readers:

• Jacobs, Harriet Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Harcourt Brace, revised edition, 1989).
• Johnson, Charles; Patricia Smith; and the WGBH Series Research Team Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery (Harcourt Brace, 1998).
• Ripley, C. Peter (ed.) Witness for Freedom. African American voices on race, slavery and emancipation (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1993).

At 21, this young man had had enough of slavery and fled from New Orleans to live in a Maroon wilderness settlement for one and a half years. (Maroons were descendants of slaves from the West Indies.)He later dictated an account of his life as a Maroon and how he stole food from a nearby plantation to survive.

Johnson's account also notes that at one point, 30 fugitives were hiding together in the wilderness, dealing with attacks from slavehunters' dogs and exchanging beef for corn meal with the field slaves.

He left the Maroon community to fight in the Civil War, earning the rank of corporal.

For younger readers

• Katz, William Loren Breaking the Chains: African American Slave Resistance (Atheneum, 1990)
• McKissack, Patricia and McKissack, Frederick Rebels Against Slavery: American Slave Revolts (Scholastic, 1996).

Born to a free blacksmith in Memphis, Mary Richardson married John Jones, another free Black. Together they were active in the Tennessee Underground Railroad, helping fugitives escape slavery.

Taking their savings of $3.50, they moved in 1845 to Illinois, a free state. There they continued their work to help runaway slaves, including harboring abolitionist John Brown. John Jones wrote a pamphlet against the state's Black Laws.

For younger readers

• Katz, William Loren Black Women of the Old West (Atheneum, 1995).

This man was enslaved in Lexington, Kentucky, but permitted to travel across the Ohio River to serve as a minister in a Cincinnati church. King was one of the founders of the Allen Temple, a church that joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1823. By moving between Lexington and Cincinnati, King was able to help African Americans in the South communicate with family and friends in the North.

For older readers:

• Horton, James Oliver Free People of Color. Inside the African American Community (Smithsonian Institution, 1993).

Lambert and his colleague George De Baptiste are reported to have established a secret escape approach for fugitives in Detroit. Called "African American Mysteries: The Order of the Men of Oppression," the network used a series of passwords, hand grips, and rituals meant to assure secrecy.

Katz quotes Lambert as saying "It was fight and run - danger at every turn, but that we calculated upon, and were prepared for."

One writer (Buckmaster) asserts that in 31 years of aiding runaway slaves, Lambert helped 30,000 fugitives across the river from Detroit.

For younger readers

• Katz, William Loren Breaking the Chains: African American Slave Resistance (Atheneum, 1990).

For older readers:

• Buckmaster, Henrietta Let My People Go (Univ. of South Carolina Press, reprint 1992).

This man from Ohio became the first African American elected official in the United States. He was able to run for office because his skin was light enough in color that people thought he was White. For his part, Langston never pretended that he was other than proudly Black.

In an article appearing in Frederick Douglass' Paper, April 20, 1855, Langston wrote: "... [the Independent Democrats] put upon their ticket the name of a colored man, who was elected clerk of Brownhelm Township, by a very handsome majority indeed. Since I am the only colored man who lives in this township, you can easily guess the name of the man who was so fortunate as to secure this election."

He spoke and wrote about the effects of slavery on all the people - both Black and White - of the US. The influence of slavery, he wrote, "pervaded every crevice and cranny of society."

For older readers:

• Brandt, Nat The Town that Started the Civil War (Syracuse University Press, 1990).
• Ripley, C. Peter (ed.) Witness for Freedom. African American voices on race, slavery and emancipation (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1993).

Enslaved in Norfolk, Va., by James Gray, Latimer and his pregnant wife - who was also a slave, but lived on a nearby farm - managed a clever escape. They hid in the prow of a boat headed north. Imagine staying curled up in the small section of the prow holding the stone weights that ships used as ballast - for a nine-hour sail to Boston!

Once in Boston, they began looking for work. Unfortunately, someone had spotted them from a newspaper ad. Latimer was arrested, but free African Americans and abolitionists aroused the public and forced Gray to sell Latimer for $400. A Black Baptist church in Boston, the Tremont Temple, purchased their freedom.

Latimer and his wife were free, but not free from constant fear of being recaptured. The family moved often to avoid being retaken. Partially paralyzed by a stroke, Latimer died in 1896.

His son, Lewis, became an expert in the young field of electricity, eventually working with Thomas Edison.

For younger readers

• Myers, Walter Dean Now is Your Time. The African-American Struggle for Freedom (Harper Collins, 1991).

For older readers:

• Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem and Alan Steinburg Black Profiles in Courage (William Morrow, 1996).
• Collison, Gary Shadrach Minkins From Fugitive Slave to Citizen (Harvard Univ. Press, 1997).

Lewis left her home in New Lebanon, Ohio, to get to the banks of the Ohio River. There she helped runaways escape from Kentucky to the free state of Ohio. She is reported to have regularly rowed them across the river to safety.

For younger readers

• Hamilton, Virginia Many Thousands Gone: from Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1993).

For older readers:

• Franklin, John Hope and Alfred A. Moss Jr. From Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1988).

A student at Oberlin College in Ohio, Lincoln became a passionate abolitionist after reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He traveled to rural Kentucky to preach against slavery, once reportedly even with pistols of the sheriff and his deputies pointed at him.

In 1858, Lincoln took part in the rescue of fugitive John Price in what became known as the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue. He led a group of five men to help free Price and was later one of 37 men indicted for their actions against the Fugitive Slave Law.

After serving time in jail, Lincoln resumed his antislavery work but refused to serve in the Union army since the abolition of slavery was not part of the Union’s political push.

He died in 1920 in Painesville, Ohio, the last of the so-called “rescuers.”

For older readers:

• Brandt, Nat The Town that Started the Civil War (Syracuse University Press, 1990).

A close friend of Harriet Tubman, Loguen was a well-known Black stationmaster on the Underground Railroad. Escaping from bondage in Tennessee, he made it to Canada. But he didn't stay there.

He and his wife moved to Syracuse, New York, where he became a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Together, the Loguens used their home and their church as "safehouses" for escaping fugitives. They are thought to have helped some 1,500 enslaved people reach Canada.

Rev. Loguen's aid didn't end with helping fugitives escape slavery. As manager of the Fugitive Aid Society in Syracuse, he worked hard to help fugitives find jobs, urging area residents to hire them in their farms and businesses. Largely because of his work, Syracuse became known as "the Canada of the United States."

Of course, that was before the Fugitive Slave Law, of which Loguen said: "I don't respect this law - I don't fear it - I won't obey it! It outlaws me and I outlaw it."

He published an autobiography in 1859, Rev. Jermain W. Loguen as a Slave and as a Freeman.

For younger readers

• Haskins, Jim Get on Board: The Story of the Underground Railroad (Scholastic, 1993).
• Katz, William Loren Breaking the Chains: African American Slave Resistance (Atheneum, 1990).

For older readers:

• Horton, James Oliver Free People of Color. Inside the African American Community (Smithsonian Institution, 1993).
• Meltzer, Milton The Black Americans. A History in Their Own Words (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1984).
• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford University Press, 1969).
• Ripley, C. Peter (ed.) Witness for Freedom. African American voices on race, slavery and emancipation (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1993).

Malvin was a successful Black business owner who helped runaways escape from slavery. He owned a canal boat that regularly traveled between Cleveland and Marietta, Ohio. His boat frequently transported fugitives who had come to Marietta from the southern side of the Ohio River.

Using some of his business income, Malvin bought the freedom of his father-in-law, Caleb Dorsey. In 1836, Malvin established the School Education Society for African Americans in Cleveland.

For younger readers

• Hamilton, Virginia Many Thousands Gone: from Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1993).

For older readers:

• Malvin, John North Into Freedom: The Autobiography of John Malvin, Free Negro.
• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford Univ. Press, 1969).

In 1851 this enslaved woman and her three daughters traveled west at the end of their owner's 300-wagon caravan. They were responsible for caring for the livestock. Mason knew California was a free state.

When the owners prepared to move again, this time to Texas, Mason refused to go with them, asserting that she was free since she was living in a free state. She persuaded the White sheriff to prevent her owner from taking her family with them. With help, she took her case to the Los Angeles federal district court and was declared free in 1856.

Mason began investing in real estate. She used the money she made to help other African American families and organizations. In the late 1880s, her estate was valued at more than $200,000.

For younger readers

• Katz, William Loren Black Women of the Old West (Atheneum, 1995).
• Schliessel, Lillian Black Frontiers: A History of African American Heroes in the Old West (Simon & Schuster, 1995).

Mason fled from slavery in Kentucky into Canada. He returned south for other enslaved people, eventually bringing a total of some 1,000 people to freedom. After successfully helping 265 to Canada, Mason was caught and sold back into slavery. For resisting, both of his arms were broken. He somehow managed to escape once again and returned to his mission of helping people find freedom.

For younger readers

• Hamilton, Virginia Many Thousands Gone: from Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1993). Cosner, Sharon The Underground Railroad (New York: Franklin Watts, 1991).
• Katz, William Loren Breaking the Chains: African-American Slave Resistance (Atheneum, 1990).

Raised a Quaker, Lucretia Mott gained self-confidence by speaking at Quaker meeting. She asserted that slavery was a sin and deserved to be abolished. For 40 years she served as president of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Association, which she also helped to found.

Along with several other women, Mott traveled to the World Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840 but was denied a seat because she was a woman. The insult inspired Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to plan a women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Mott spoke at that historic convention, giving the opening and closing addresses.

She committed herself to working to abolish slavery and promote women's rights.

She and her husband James housed fugitive slaves in their home in Philadelphia. After emancipation, they continued to press for improved education for African Americans.

For younger readers

• Bryant, Jennifer Lucretia Mott: A Guiding Light Reading level: Young Adult (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995).
• Katz, William Lorenz A History of Multicultural America. The Westward Movement and Abolitionism (Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 1993).

For older readers:

• Bacon, Margaret Hope Valiant Friend: The Life of Lucretia Mott (Friends General Conference, 1999).
• Audio book Heckert, Eileen (Reader), Claudia McNeil, Mildred Natwick, Sharon Donovan Great American Women's Speeches: Lucretia Mott/Sojourner Truth/Ernestine Rose/Lucy Stone/Susan B. Anthony/Elizabeth Cady Stanton/Carrie Chapman Catt (Harper Audio, 1995).

John P. Parker was eight when he was sold from his enslaved mother in Norfolk, Virginia, to an agent from Richmond. Sold again to a slave caravan, he walked shackled to other slaves from Norfolk to Mobile, Alabama. His account of the journey is one of the early incidents in His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1996). The book draws from a series of interviews with Parker conducted in 1885 by newspaperman Frank M. Gregg.

In Mobile, a doctor bought Parker and the doctor's sons taught him to read and write. John, 16, went north with those sons as they enrolled in college; however, the doctor, fearing Parker would escape, ordered him back to Mobile.

Parker tried several times to escape to freedom. Apprenticed as a plasterer, he tried to escape to New Orleans after one of his coworkers repeatedly harassed him, but was found and returned to the doctor. Next Parker was apprenticed to a molder at a local iron foundry, where he was allowed to keep some of his earnings. Parker begged an older patient of the doctor's to "buy" him; she eventually agreed, and he worked day and night to purchase his freedom from her.

A free man, he moved to Southern Ohio. Around 1853 he started his own foundry behind his home in Ripley, a tobacco center on the banks of the Ohio River and a focus of Underground Railroad activity. Parker invented several devices, including a tobacco press. He became one of a handful of African Americans to obtain a U.S. patent in the 19th century.

As he grew into a successful businessman, he also became involved in Underground Railroad activities. Although he could not keep written records that might be used to convict him of aiding slaves, he is thought to have helped hundreds of enslaved people escape to freedom. Well-known by regional slave-catchers, Parker risked his own life time and again by traveling across the river to lead fugitives to safety in Ripley. Once the fugitive slaves were across the river, Parker would deliver them to other conductors, such as Rev. John Rankin, who would harbor the fugitive slaves and help them to the next depot on the network.

The John P. Parker House is located in Ripley, Ohio, at 300 Front Street. The house is currently being renovated.

For younger readers

• Gaines, Edith Freedom Light. Underground Railroad Stories from Ripley, Ohio (New Day Press, 1991).
• Rappaport, Doreen A Freedom River (Jump at the Sun, 2000).

For older readers:

• Franklin, John Hope and Alfred A. Moss Jr. From Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1988).
• Stuart S. Sprague, ed. His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad (W. W. Norton & Co., 1996).

An ordained Baptist minister, Rev. Paul organized the African Baptist Church in Boston in 1805. Under his leadership, the church became an important gathering place for Blacks in Boston and later for antislavery meetings.

Paul and his family were very involved in social as well as religious matters in Boston. His brothers Nathaniel and Benjamin were antislavery speakers and abolitionists. Thomas, his oldest son, worked as an apprentice with William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the Liberator. Thomas was also the first Black graduate of Dartmouth College. Paul's daughter Susan, also an antislavery reformer, was one of the vice presidents for the second annual Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women in Philadelphia in 1838.

For older readers:

• Horton, James Oliver Free People of Color. Inside the African American Community (Smithsonian Institution, 1993).
• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford Univ. Press, 1969).

Pennington fled from slavery in Maryland in 1828. In 1841 he published the first history of Africans, Textbook of the Origin and History of the Colored People. A former blacksmith, he became a minister who preached regularly against slavery and made several antislavery speaking tours of Europe.

After the war, he caused a stir when he refused to move from the white section of a streetcar in New York City.

For older readers:

• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford University Press, 1969).
• Ripley, C. Peter (ed.) Witness for Freedom. African American voices on race, slavery and emancipation (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1993).

A free Black woman, Pleasant somehow got to the west. Not much is known about her earlier life except that she may have sent money to John Brown for his raid in Harpers Ferry.

In California she helped slaves flee their owners. She may also have operated a house on the Underground Railroad. After the Civil War, she worked hard to desegregate San Francisco's streetcars.

For younger readers

• Katz, William Loren Breaking the Chains: African American Slave Resistance (Atheneum, 1990).
• Katz, William Loren Black Women of the Old West (Atheneum, 1995).

Born in South Carolina, Posey moved to Indiana with his family in 1804. Settling in Pike County, he practiced medicine until his retirement in 1855. Dr. Posey was known as a champion of slaves and his home on the bluffs overlooking the White River was reported to have been a station on the Underground Railroad. Legend says the house had secret passages and a tunnel leading to the river through which slaves could make their way to skiffs and be taken across the river.

Dr. Posey also used his coal mine to help runaways evade capture. In 1837 two African Americans awaiting return to Kentucky were whisked away from their guards and hidden in the coal shaft until they could make a getaway.

For older readers:

• Pike County History compiled by Ruth Miley McClellan, Pike County Historical Society, Petersburg, Indiana.

On September 13, 1858, two slave-catchers from Kentucky tracked down John Price, an 18-year-old who had escaped from bondage. When two young men who had seen the recapture told a crowd at Oberlin College, nearly 200 people started towards the railroad station eight miles away where the slave-catchers and Mr. Price were waiting for a train back to Kentucky. Several students used a ladder to reach the room where Mr. Price was held captive and somehow helped him escape.

In a widely watched court case, 37 people from Oberlin and Wellington (where the station was) were convicted of aiding and abetting a fugitive slave. Mr. Price was once again recaptured in Lorain County, but the slave-catchers were arrested and indicted by a grand jury.

Eventually, both suits were dropped.

For younger readers

• Katz, William Loren Breaking the Chains: African American Slave Resistance (Atheneum, 1990).
• Sawyer, Kem Knapp The Underground Railroad in American History (Enslow Publishers, 1997).

For older readers:

• Brandt, Nat The Town that Started the Civil War (Syracuse University Press, 1990).

Robert's family moved from Charleston, SC, to Philadelphia when he was ten years old. His father was an English cotton merchant and his mother a freeborn woman of German-Jewish and African heritage.

After his father's death, Robert inherited a small fortune that he invested in real estate. He became a contributor to abolitionist causes, in 1838 helping to found the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee.

In 1831, Robert married Harriet Forten, the daughter of prominent African American businessman James Forten. Together with William Still, the Purvises are said to have helped nearly 9,000 people along the Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania. The Purvis home was called "Saints' Rest" by abolitionists in Philadelphia.

Their son, Henry, was elected to the South Carolina legislature during the Reconstruction period.

For younger readers

• Douty, Esther M. Forten the Sailmaker: Pioneer Champion of Negro Rights (Rand McNally, 1968).
• Hamilton, Virginia Many Thousands Gone: from Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1993).
• Sawyer, Kem Knapp The Underground Railroad in American History (Enslow Publishers, 1997).

For older readers:

• Meltzer, Milton The Black Americans. A History in Their Own Words (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1984).
• Ripley C. Peter (ed.) Witness for Freedom. African American voices on race, slavery and emancipation (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1993).
• Time Life Books African Americans: Voices of Triumph. Perseverance (1993).

A Presbyterian minister, Rev. John Rankin penned some of the earliest published writings against slavery. The Ripley, Ohio, newspaper published Rankin's letters to his brother in Virginia, a slave state. In 1826 Rankin bound the pieces in Letters on American Slavery. This book was widely read, influencing a number of abolitionists including William Lloyd Garrison.

From his home overlooking the Ohio River in Ripley, Rankin was an active participant in helping fugitives escape north. Jean Rankin and their 13 children were also involved, harboring and feeding an estimated 2,000 people on their way to the next safe place towards freedom.

Among those in Ripley who worked with Rankin and former slave John Parker were several White residents, including Dr. Alexander Campbell and the Collins brothers as well as many free African Americans, including Rhoda Jones, Polly Jackson, Lindsey Jackson, Billy Martin, Joseph Settles and others.

The Rankin House in Ripley is a National Historic Landmark.

For younger readers

• Gaines, Edith Freedom`s Light. Underground Railroad Stories from Ripley, Ohio (New Day Press, 1991).
• Hamilton, Virginia Many Thousands Gone: from Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1993).

For older readers:

• Buckmaster, Henrietta Let My People Go (Univ. of South Carolina Press, reprint 1992).
• Rankin, Rev. John Life of Rev. John Rankin, written by himself in his 80th year (ca. 1872).

This Black abolitionist maintained a haven for fugitive slaves in his New York City home. One report notes that 14 fugitives walked up his front steps one summer morning. A blacksmith-turned journalist and Congregationalist minister, Ray worked as the editor of The Colored American from 1839-1841. He was also active in voting rights and temperance issues.

As the corresponding secretary for the New York State Vigilance Committee, Ray was an important figure in that organization. From 1851-1853, the Committee counseled more than 600 former slaves and eventually secured the freedom of 38 who had been brought to New York, a free state, by their owners.

For older readers:

• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford Univ. Press, 1969).
• Ripley, C. Peter (ed.) Witness for Freedom. African American voices on race, slavery and emancipation (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1993).

This brother and sister combination battled segregation in churches, schools, and transportation. Their father was a successful businessman from Curacao and their mother a free Black. Charles became the first African American lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. He traveled on an exhausting schedule, sometimes speaking several times in one day.

When Sarah was growing up, she was refused entrance to a White school in their hometown of Salem, Massachusetts. As a result, the family moved to Providence, Rhode Island, so she could attend a private school. When she was only 16, Sarah began to accompany her brother on the lecture circuit, speaking out against slavery and discrimination. In later years, Sarah practiced medicine in Italy.

After Charles spent a year and a half in Great Britain as a delegate to the world Anti-Slavery Convention in London, he brought back an "Address from the People of Ireland." This document included 60,000 signatures urging Irish Americans to "oppose slavery by peaceful means and to insist upon liberty for all regardless of color, creed, or country."

For older readers:

• Franklin, John Hope and Alfred A. Moss Jr. From Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1988).
• Horton, James Oliver Free People of Color. Inside the African American Community (Smithsonian Institution, 1993).
• Quarles, Benjamin Black Abolitionists (Oxford Univ. Press, 1969).
• Time Life Books African Americans Voices of Triumph: Perseverance (Time-Life, 1993).

All too often the records of brave escapes by enslaved people list only their first names. This couple first fled from their Battle, Alabama, plantation in 1836 but were caught and sent to jail in Montgomery. Their next attempt led them to Georgia, where they were found in Columbus and recaptured briefly before they managed to escape, this time for good.

For younger readers

• Katz, William Loren Breaking the Chains: African American Slave Resistance (Atheneum, 1990).

Born to free Black parents in New Jersey, Rock attended public schools there until he was 19. In 1844 he began a four-year stint of teaching at the same time that he studied medicine with two White doctors. He was unable to enroll in medical school, either because of poor health or because of his race. In the meantime, he switched to dentistry and started a night school for Blacks. He finally was admitted into the American Medical College of Philadelphia, where he graduated in 1852.

After moving to Boston, Rock began treating the medical needs of the fugitive slaves. He also spoke in the antislavery movement. He became famous for a speech on March 5, 1858, the day honoring Crispus Attucks, the Black man killed in the Boston Massacre. In that speech, Rock stressed pride in African Americans and their rich history.

He began to study law and became one of a very few African Americans admitted to the Massachusetts Bar before the Civil War. Despite his remarkable achievements, Rock continued to experience discrimination. Once, returning home from being the first Black to be received on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, he was arrested for not having the "pass" required of all Blacks.

Rock was the first Black attorney admitted to argue cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

For older readers:

• Parsons, William S. and Drew, Margaret The African Meeting House in Boston: A Sourcebook (The Museum of Afro American History).

Born in Poland, Rose moved to the United States in 1836. She became an activist, speaking out for abolition, women's rights, and free schools. Rose once told slaveowners: "The only civilization you have exists among the slaves; for if industry and mechanical arts are the greatest criterion of civilization (and I believe they are), then certainly the slaves are the only civilized ones among you, because they do all the work."

An excellent speaker, she was compared with Ralph Waldo Emerson for brilliance. She often met with heckling -- and worse. In New York City in 1850 with Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, a group of proslavery people attacked the speakers.

For younger readers

• Katz, William Loren A History of Multicultural America. The Westward Movement and Abolitionism (Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 1993).

A Canadian doctor who was fascinated by the natural world, Alexander Ross hated slavery and vowed to do something about it. He came to the United States to speak with other abolitionists. They devised a creative plan: Ross would go south, posing as a scientist observing the area's birds. He would actually give information to slaves about escaping their bondage.

On his first trip, he went to Richmond, Virginia, and observed what he could about the slaves there. Arranging to speak to a group of slaves at a minister's house, he described routes they could use to head toward freedom. He also offered money, food, weapons, and compasses.

His scheme worked and he continued to help people escape to freedom up until the start of the Civil War.

For younger readers

• Hamilton, Virginia Many Thousands Gone: from Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1993).
• Haskins, Jim Get on Board: The Story of the Underground Railroad (Scholastic, 1993).

For older readers:

• Buckmaster, Henrietta Let My People Go (Univ. of South Carolina Press, reprint 1992).

David Ruggles headed the New York Committee of Vigilance and was the conductor who sheltered Frederick Douglass when he escaped to New York. From there, Ruggles helped him get to New Haven, Connecticut.

In addition to offering a safe house to fugitives, Ruggles monitored the legal cases of those fleeing slaves who had been recaptured. The New York Committee of Vigilance, which he founded and led, was one of the most active such groups in the country. In all, Ruggles is reported to have helped more than 1,000 slaves escape.

Frederick Douglass once said of Ruggles: "He was a whole-souled man, fully imbued with a love of his afflicted and haunted people."

For younger readers

• McKissack, Patricia and McKissack, Frederick Rebels Against Slavery: American Slave Revolts (Scholastic, 1996).

For older readers:

• Horton, James Oliver Free People of Color. Inside the African American Community (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993).
• Johnson, Charles; Patricia Smith; and the WGBH Series Research Team Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery (Harcourt Brace, 1998).
• Time Life Books African Americans: Voices of Triumph. Perseverance (1993).

Not only was Rush a member of the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, he was also a physician and spokesman for human rights. Sometimes called the "Father of American Medicine," Rush was a vigorous critic of slavery. He helped Philadelphia's Black leaders raise money for the first African American church, Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal.

Rush knew first-hand about slavery as his father was a Philadelphia gunsmith and slaveowner. After studying at Princeton University (then known as the College of New Jersey), Rush got his medical training in Edinburgh and Paris.

Returning to Philadelphia in 1773 to start his medical practice, he wrote a pamphlet entitled "An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America, upon Slave-Keeping." In it he attacked the institution of slavery. Rush was deeply affected by his colleague and mentor, Quaker Anthony Benezet. Benezet despised slavery and a dream about Benezet's ghost had a significant effect on Rush. He actively participated in the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. In 1788 Rush promised freedom to his own slave, William Grubber.

During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, Rush worked with Revs. Richard Allen and Absalom Jones to care for the sick and dying in Philadelphia.

For older readers:

• Barton, David Benjamin Rush: Signer of the Declaration of Independence (Wallbuilder Press, 1999).
• Johnson, Charles; Patricia Smith; and the WGBH Series Research Team Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery (Harcourt Brace, 1998).

Born into slavery in Missouri in 1795, Dred Scott saw his first wife and two children sold away. He and his second wife Harriet had two daughters, and Scott was determined that they would live in freedom.

Scott's owner moved to Illinois, a free state. In 1846 in Missouri, Scott filed suit for his freedom, asserting that he lived in a free territory so he must be a free man.

The case was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney ruled that African Americans were not citizens and had no rights in the U.S. This included the right to sue in a court of law. Taney wrote in his opinion that African American men and women were "an inferior class of beings" who "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

Slaveholders applauded the ruling while abolitionists decried it. Scott himself was rescued from slavery when a group of citizens bought his freedom. He and Harriet worked in St. Louis, he as a porter and Harriet running a laundry business. The Dred Scott case showed just how divisive the issue of slavery was for the United States.

For younger readers

• Fleischner, Jennifer The Dred Scott Case: Testing the Right to Live Free (Millbrook, 1993). Reading level: ages 9-12.
• Katz, William Loren Breaking the Chains: African American Slave Resistance (Atheneum, 1990).
• Myers, Walter Dean Now is Your Time. The African-American Struggle for Freedom (Harper Collins, 1991).
• Patrick, Diane The New York Public Library Amazing African American History (John Wiley, 1998).
• Smith, Carter (ed.) Prelude to War (Millbrook Press, 1