Reminiscences Of Levi Coffin T

Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, The Reputed President of the Underground Railroad

Presents the biography of a Quaker man from North Carolina whose fearless work on the Underground Railroad in Indiana and Ohio helped thousands of men and women escape the cruelty of slavery. Reprint.

'Levi Coffin and the Underground Railroad' recreates the human drama, pathos, excitement, and danger surrounding the attempts of American blacks in the 1800s to find release from oppression in the South. With cruelty to slaves indelibly impressed on his mind as a child, young Levi Coffin, a Quaker, was determined to spend his life improving their lot. In spite of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, he took seriously the admonition of Deuteronomy 23:15: Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee. Levi appealed to the consciences of fellow Quakers. He and his wife, Catherine, provided refuge, food, and moral support in their home during several decades for a stream of some 3,000 runaways headed for Canada. One of the slaves the Coffins assisted, Eliza Harris, became the leading character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's influential novel, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'. Frustrated by Coffin's successful efforts to help fugitives elude recapture, slave-hunters nicknamed him President of the Underground Railroad. The network of cooperative homes became known as stations or depots, the wagons as trains, the drivers as brakemen or firemen, and the hosts along the way as stationmasters or conductors. This book presents Levi Coffin's experiences in a way that will capture the interest and admiration of young and old alike.

Published to coincide with Black History Month and the opening of the new Underground Railroad Museum in Cincinnati, Fleeing for Freedom includes selected narratives from the two most important contemporary chroniclers of the Underground Railroad, Levi Coffin and William Still. Here are firsthand descriptions of the experiences of escaped slaves making their way to freedom in the North and in Canada in the years before the Civil War. George and Willene Hendrick have chosen a broad range of stories to reflect the strategies, tactics, heartbreak, and dangers—for both the slaves and the "conductors"—of the secret network. In their Introduction, they provide basic information about the scope and workings of the Underground Railroad and its impact on slaves, slaveholders, and the Northern abolitionist societies that were so heavily involved. Fleeing for Freedom offers gripping personal accounts of one of the great collaborations between whites and blacks in American history. With 15 black-and-white engravings and line drawings.

A new interpretation of the Underground Railroad that places violence at the center of the story.

When Tina S. meets April, a teenage runaway, she thinks she's found her best friend. She leaves behind her dysfunctional family to join April in the tunnels of Grand Central Station amidst the homeless and drug addicted. Soon she's bingeing on crack--just like April--and stealing, scamming and panhandling to support her habit and to survive on the streets. In her own words, she describes her descent into crack addiction, being raped in the tunnels, her several arrests and jail terms and her grief and guilt over the death of April, whom she'd come to love. Finally faced with the reality that she might not make it through one more day, Tina takes her first difficult steps towards a normal life. With the help of a homeless advocate and his wife, a gay uncle dying of AIDS, and the woman who was to become her co-author on this book, Tina turns her life around and makes her way back to the world of the living.