The Search For The Underground Railroad In South Central Ohio

The Underground Railroad remains one of America's most ennobling true stories, and the people of Ohio played their part in this heroic endeavor. Suffering a crisis of conscience, Presbyterian minister James Gilliland left his South Carolina home for Red Oak, where he became one of the state's earliest and strongest abolitionists. Peru Township's Richard Dillingham died helping the enslaved escape bondage. In Alum Creek, three generations of the Benedict family risked life and limb doing the same. Quakers Jane and Valentine Nicholson of Clinton County carted many a fugitive to freedom, as did Wilmington Quaker Abraham Allen with his trusty Liberator wagon. Drawing on decades of research, author Tom Calarco uncovers the real tales of our nation's quest for freedom and equality for all.

In the years leading up to the Civil War, Ohio had more African American settlements than any other state. Owing to a common border with several slave states, it became a destination for people of color seeking to separate themselves from slavery. Despite these communities having populations that sometimes numbered in the hundreds, little is known about most of them, and by the beginning of the twentieth century, nearly all had lost their ethnic identities as the original settlers died off and their descendants moved away. Save for scattered cemeteries and an occasional house or church, they have all but been erased from Ohio's landscape. Father-daughter coauthors David Meyers and Elise Meyers Walker piece together the stories of more than forty of these black settlements.

Ohio was at the heart of it all. During a dark time in United States history, thousands of freedom seekers traveled the Underground Railroad through Ohio. The Buckeye State hosted about half of all fugitive slave traffic of the antebellum era. A mix of Northern and Southern settlers in the state added drama to a struggle that led to major benefits for the state and the country. Unfortunately, this epic past was obscured by silence and secrecy and then distorted with misinformation and folklore--until now. Author and native Ohioan Kathy Schulz accurately details the development and workings of Ohio's Underground Railroad with true stories of Addison White, John Parker and others.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • "An American masterpiece" (NPR) that chronicles a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. • The basis for the acclaimed original Amazon Prime Video series directed by Barry Jenkins. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood—where greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with him. In Colson Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering, like Gulliver, strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the terrors of the antebellum era, he weaves in the saga of our nation, from the brutal abduction of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is both the gripping tale of one woman's will to escape the horrors of bondage—and a powerful meditation on the history we all share. Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto, coming soon!

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

Children can imagine being witnesses to history-in-the-making in this series that explores important events in United States history. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.