Forthcoming in 2025
A New NPS Handbook on the Underground Railroad with Essays from Nearly Two Dozen Leading Scholars
This website hosted by the House Divided Project at Dickinson College provides an online companion to the forthcoming National Park Service (NPS) handbook on the Underground Railroad, including full-text access to the scholarly essays. Diane Miller from the Network to Freedom at NPS pens the Foreword for the collection with a full introductory essay from editor Matthew Pinsker of Dickinson College and a closing epilogue by noted scholar RJM Blackett. A section on thematic context includes essays on freedom seekers (Anthony Cohen), federal laws (Paul Finkelman), state laws (H. Robert Baker), abolitionism (Manisha Sinha), religion (Cheryl Janifer LaRoche), women (Kate Clifford Larson), revolutionary violence (Kellie Carter Jackson), antbellum politics (James Oakes), wartime escapes (Chandra Manning), historiography (Spencer Crew), and popular myths (Fergus M. Bordewich).
The regional context section offers essays on the Northwest (Déanda Johnson), Southwest (Alice L. Baumgartner), Southern Maroon communities (Damian Alan Pargas), Atlantic coastal network (Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander), Ohio River valley (Robert H. Churchill), Washington, DC region (Stanley Harrold), Middle Atlantic (Eric Foner), New England (Kathryn Grover), and Canada West (Gordon S. Barker).
This companion website also hosts several interactive tools, designed especially for use by classroom teachers and site interpreters. Visitors will find interactive timelines and maps as well as litany of downloadable images and embedded videos. In addition to all of these helpful resources, there are some unique opportunities at this online companion site for public historians, teachers, and students to make their own contributions to the evolving insights about the Underground Railroad and the fight to destroy slavery in America. Check out the various Resources pages for more details.
This material was produced through a contract with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), funded by the Department of the Interior, National Park Service. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASALH, Dickinson College, or the Department of the Interior.