"Underground Railroad History is Important, But It's Important to Highlight the Histories of Self-Emancipators, Too"

In New York State, due to the pioneering work of archivist Charles Blockson, a Freedom Trail has been established, allowing visitors to visit preserved Underground Railroad sites and to imagine what passengers may have experienced in those days.1 Books about the Underground Railroad include Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory, Bound for Canaan: The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America 's First Civil Rights Movement, Underground Railroad in New York and New Jersey, and Secret Lives of the Underground Railroad in New York City.2 More fine works will also be produced in the future. More crucial knowledge is regularly being uncovered as scholars convey more comprehensive stories.3 Although Underground Railroad history is extremely important, we should remember the stories of enslaved people who gained their freedom largely by their own efforts, without using the Underground Railroad. In his masterful work The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (1979), historian John W. Blassingame noted that when enslaved individuals decided to escape, they had two fears: white men and hunger.3 In slavery, they had been dominated by white men-masters, overseers, patrollers, slave hunters, local militias, the military, and the court system.6 This collective force could subdue them in their desperate attempt to escape. [...]one key survival tactic was to never trust anyone, or only when absolutely necessary. There he convinced a ship captain that he could be a crewman. [...]he escaped to New York City and then to Providence, Rhode Island, where he felt his freedom was more secure.