Levin Still, Jr. was an enslaved man and the older brother of Philadelphia vigilance leader William Still. After Still’s mother Sydney (later Charity) escaped, Still’s slaveholder sold him and his brother to Kentucky, and eventually Alabama, where he died.
ESSAYS: Larson
ROLES: Freedom Seeker
Levin Still, Sr. was an enslaved man who purchased his freedom and moved to New Jersey, where he raised fourteen more children with his wife Sydney (Charity), who escaped from slavery to join him. He was the father of abolitionist William Still.
ESSAYS: Larson
ROLES: Freedom Seeker
Peter Still (1801-1868) was the older brother of Philadelphia vigilance leader William Still. Still was born into slavery but sold him south after his mother escaped to New Jersey. Peter eventually bought his freedom and came into contact with Philadelphia’s antislavery vigilance network in 1850, where he encountered with his long-lost brother William. Peter toured as an abolitionist lecturer to raise funds to purchase the rest of his family, still enslaved.
ROLES: Freedom Seeker
Sydney (later Charity) Still escaped from slavery in Maryland and resettled in New Jersey with her husband Levin. Sydney brought her two daughters with her, but her slaveholder sold her two sons, Peter and Levin, Jr., to Kentucky. In New Jersey, she gave birth to fourteen children, including abolitionist William Still in 1821.
ESSAYS: Larson
ROLES: Freedom Seeker
William Still (1821-1902) was a central figure in the Underground Railroad, both as an antebellum vigilance leader based in Philadelphia and as a historian of the network following the Civil War. Still was born free in New Jersey to parents who had been enslaved in Maryland. He came to Philadelphia in the 1840s, securing clerical work with the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. During the 1850s, Still served as operational leader of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee, keeping detailed records which later became the basis for his groundbreaking memoir, The Underground Railroad (1872). When he died in 1902, the New York Times labeled him, “Father of the Underground Railroad.”
ESSAYS: Barker // Bordewich // Crew // Foner // Harrold // Larson // Newby-Alexander // Pinsker
ROLES: UGRR Operative
Joseph Story (1779-1845) was a US Supreme Court justice who argued in an influential opinion in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) that the federal government, rather than Northern states, was responsible for enforcing the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act.
ESSAYS: Finkelman
ROLES:
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was a novelist and author of the best-selling antislavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852).
ROLES: Abolitionist
Charles Sumner was a US senator from Massachusetts and antislavery politician.
ESSAYS: Harrold
ROLES: Antislavery Politician
Louis Talbert was an enslaved man who escaped from Kentucky in 1845.
ESSAYS: Blackett
ROLES: Freedom Seeker
Roger B. Taney (1777-1864) was the chief justice of the US Supreme Court and author of the Dred Scott ruling in 1857, which argued that African Americans could not be US citizens and that slavery was a nationally protected institution.
ROLES: Proslavery Politician
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