Abolitionist William Still publishes vigilance committee records in his book The Underground Railroad.
[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]
Professor Wilbur Siebert authors the first scholarly study of the Underground Railroad, but focuses heavily on white activists and folklore, at the expense of Black abolitionists.
[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]
The Weavers release the first commercially recorded version of “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” Adapted by Lee Hays for the popular folk-singing group in the late 1940s, the song celebrates the Underground Railroad, but leads to confusion about whether freedom seekers actually used coded songs to escape.
[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]
Historian Larry Gara publishes The Liberty Line which challenges depictions of an elaborate Underground Railroad network. Instead, Gara argues that freedom seekers escaped largely on their own with little organized assistance.
[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]
In 1999, authors Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond Dobard gain widespread attention for their claims to have uncovered the quilt codes of the Underground Railroad despite academic historians vigorously disputing their evidence. The authors interviewed the descendant of ex-slaves, a South Carolina woman and quilter named Ozella McDaniel Williams, who had died in 1998. TV host Oprah Winfrey initially promoted the quilt code claims by having Dobard appear on her show in November 1998 before the February 1999 publication of the book: Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad. Historians such as David Blight and Fergus Bordewich have since challenged these claims, with Blight calling the story “a myth bordering on a hoax,” but popular interest in possible Underground Railroad quilt codes has skyrocketed in subsequent years.
[This post is still under construction, more forthcoming in 2023]
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