The Underground Railroad helped up to 100,000 enslaved people to freedom. It was America’s first civil rights movement, operated by Black and white people united in their abhorrence of slavery. But how was it established? Who were its passengers, and the people risking everything to assist them? And what part did it play in America’s descent into civil war?
This is a Short History of the Underground Railroad.
Written by Kate Simants. Special thanks to historian Fergus Bordewich, author of Bound for Canaan; and to public historian and lecturer Christopher Miller of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Centre in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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