Details
Join historians Cicero Fain III and Andrew Feight for a conversation with Shawnee Turner, Vice President of Interpretation and Education at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, exploring new research from the Appalachian Freedom Heritage Tourism Initiative. Working across the Ohio River borderlands of Kentucky, West Virginia and southeast Ohio, the project has uncovered a richer and more complex picture of the Underground Railroad in Appalachia.
Fain and Feight will discuss how free Black communities — both in Ohio River towns and in rural settlements — provided critical networks of refuge and assistance to freedom seekers. Their research highlights the importance of Black Baptist and AME churches; Black barbers such as Gabe Johnson of Lawrence County, Ohio; the too-often-overlooked roles of Black and white women; and the interracial cooperation that sustained the region’s "underground" resistance to slavery. They will also explore the many ways freedom seekers moved through the region, including escapes aboard steamboats traveling the Ohio River.
The conversation will bring these larger themes to life through long-forgotten and previously untold stories recovered through the project’s research, including the extraordinary life of freedom seeker Asbury Parker, the Greenup Slave Revolt of 1829 and the escape of the Piketon 59 during the Civil War, one of the largest documented group escapes from slavery in Kentucky history.
Panelist Biographies
Cicero M. Fain, III, PhD
Cicero M. Fain, III, PhD, is a fourth-generation Black Huntingtonian. He is currently the Assistant Provost of Access and Opportunity at Marshall University. He received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and his Master of Education from George Mason University. He is the recipient of the Carter G. Woodson Fellowship from Marshall University and received his Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy in history from The Ohio State University.
Dr. Fain's teaching career includes positions at Marshall, Ohio University-Southern, Niagara University and the College of Southern Maryland. His first book, Black Huntington: An Appalachian Story, published in 2019 by the University of Illinois Press, was a finalist for the Weatherford Award. In 2021, the West Virginia Library Association awarded it the Literary Merit Award. He is the lead co-editor of the forthcoming Black Appalachia: Race, Place, and Identity, the follow-up anthology to 1985’s seminal Blacks in Appalachia, scheduled for publication in September 2026 by the University Press of Kentucky. His current book project, Buffalo Soldier, Deserter, Criminal: The Remarkably Complicated Life of Charles Ringo, builds on his 2015 published Ohio Valley Journal article.
Dr Fain served as the Assistant Director of Research and Outreach for the just-completed Appalachian Freedom Heritage Tourism Initiative, a 9-county, 3-state project that placed 27 Tri-state area sites, including the first three in the history of Cabell County, onto the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. He is the Marshall Liaison to the Appalachian Studies Association and, in March, served as the chair of the 49th annual Appalachian Studies Association Conference, the most successful in the history of the Association. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Appalachian Studies, and on the boards of the West Virginia Humanities Council, the Huntington Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum and the Carter G. Woodson Memorial Foundation.
Andrew (Drew) Feight, PhD
Andrew (Drew) Feight, PhD, is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Public History at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio. He is the developer and editor of the Scioto Historical Project, an award-winning mobile app and website that uses place-based storytelling and virtual historical markers to explore the history of Portsmouth and the surrounding Appalachian region.
A native of Sandy Springs, Georgia, Feight earned his Bachelor of Arts from Furman University and his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Kentucky, where he specialized in the history of the abolition movement. His research focuses on abolition, the Underground Railroad and the long struggle for African American freedom and civil rights in Appalachia. His related work in public history encompasses digital humanities, historic preservation and cultural heritage tourism.
He currently serves as Director of Research and Outreach for the Appalachian Freedom Heritage Tourism Initiative, an Appalachian Regional Commission POWER Grant–funded project documenting and interpreting Underground Railroad history across Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia. He led the development of the initiative’s website, AppalachianFreedom.com, and has researched and authored multiple nominations accepted into the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.
Fifth Third Community Days are made possible through the generous support of the Fifth Third Foundation. Museum guests receive free admission and the opportunity to experience special programming activities. Reserve your tickets online or in-person.
