Underground Railroad

The history of a people, with all the grief, faith and determination that entails, can be heard in the simple strains of spirituals, one of the most enduring and endearing genres of American music. This week, stellar soprano Kathleen Battle will join the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Morgan State University Choir in the premiere of a spiritual-filled program she developed celebrating the Underground Railroad. No voice in recent times is more associated with this music than Battle's.

We commend President Barack Obama for designating the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument ("A monument to Md. abolitionist," March 26). Just days after the centennial of her death, Harriet Tubman is finally receiving the national recognition she deserves as a heroic conductor on the Underground Railroad and an early leader for women's rights. The National Monument will include locations in Caroline, Dorchester, and Talbot counties, complimenting the Tubman State Park which broke ground for the construction of a world-class visitor's center on March 9. The landscapes of Ms. Tubman's birthplace and her early life on the Eastern Shore are a vital part of the Chesapeake's story that will now be conserved and interpreted for current and future generations, providing a major draw for travelers and economic development.

Maia Woods had long wondered about the strange-looking house on Rolling Road in Rockdale, the one that sits off Liberty Road, boarded up and neglected. On Saturday, she found out about its years as a station on the Underground Railroad, how it's been moved twice in its 200-plus-year history by family members well aware of its historical importance, and how it was bought by a couple 30 years ago determined to see it preserved — even though it's been so contaminated by pesticides that no one will ever be able to live in it again.

President Barack Obama's designation Monday of a new national monument to Harriet Tubman, who escaped slavery on a Dorchester County plantation in 1849, then helped guide scores of other slaves to freedom in the North during the decade before the Civil War, honors a small and unprepossessing African-American woman who played an outsized role in American history. Mr. Obama's proclamation sets aside the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument near the city of Cambridge on Maryland's Eastern Shore as a historical preservation site to be administered by the National Park Service.

Under the watchful eye of Underground Railroad "conductor" Harriet Tubman, more than 300 slaves were led to freedom on Chesapeake Bay waterways. It is one of many little-known facts about the bay's role in the Underground Railroad - the network of anti-slavery Northerners that illegally helped fugitive slaves reach safety in the free states or Canada before the Civil War. That piece of history is on display this month for another type of traveler....

Think about it: The place where crowds watch outdoor performers between the two Harborplace pavilions was once a station on the fabled Underground Railroad.The Underground Railroad, the secret route that shepherded thousands of slaves out of bondage to freedom, sliced through Baltimore. One of its spurs was the old Philadelphia steamship packet line whose boats docked at the corner of Pratt and Light streets.Consider this too. One day there might be an official Underground Railroad tour that will meander throughout the Inner Harbor's well-known tourist attractions and some that are not so well known.

WASHINGTON -- In the days of slavery, American blacks made their way north to freedom in Canada through the Underground Railroad, a loose chain of safe houses and abolitionist enclaves they found by word of mouth."

As she walked around the two former slave cabins in Elkridge, Paulina Moss rubbed her fingertips over the rotted wood of the pre-Civil War shacks."We come from a strong people," said Ms. Moss, who photographed and took notes on the buildings as part of a research project on Howard County's place in the Underground Railroad network for fugitive slaves. "I knew it all along, but this really proves it."Fascinated by slaves who sought freedom, Ms. Moss, a resident of Columbia's Owen Brown village, is one of nine volunteers brought together in August, by the Columbia-based Howard County Center of African American Culture, to document Underground Railroad stops in the county.

UNIONVILLE, Ohio - The lunch crowd was heedless of the runaway slave tunnels beneath the Unionville Tavern, where Debra Laveck poked around, trying to rediscover an old Underground Railroad crawlway to a cemetery across the road. "There was a fake grave over there where the abolitionists had the runaways climb down into the tunnel," Laveck explained. She was delving deep into the historic past, where the cramped tunnel, barely wide enough for a slave's shoulders, snaked darkly below what is now a paved road.

The National Park Service lists only two sites in Maryland on its register of historic places where runaway slaves were helped to freedom on the Underground Railroad: the President Street rail station and the Orchard Street Church, both in Baltimore.Another location -- a national historic landmark -- is Kennedy Farm in Washington County, the headquarters for abolitionist John Brown before his raid on Harpers Ferry, W.Va.But if Congress passes a bill to give the National Park Service $500,000 a year to preserve the routes and legacy of the Underground Railroad -- considered the nation's first civil rights movement -- scores of other local stops on the freedom trail would likely be added to the list.

Stories of one of the country's most contentious debates over slavery and westward expansion and the Underground Railroad filled the Bel Air library June 23. With more than 50 in attendance, Fergus Bordewich, author of "America's Great Debate," spoke about the about the epic story of the Compromise of 1850, bringing to life during his animated discussion the colorful characters like Daniel Webster and John Colhoon and their stances. Stories included those not found in history books about the longest debate in Congressional history - like the fights that broke out on the Senate floor; the extraordinary political strategies that were at work during this turbulent time in our history; and the untold heroes of the Underground Railroad.

Harriet Tubman was one tough lady. She escaped slavery, fleeing an Eastern Shore plantation. She was a leader in the Underground Railroad, traveling at night under the North Star — probably along the Choptank River — hiding at safe houses along the path to freedom. During the Civil War, she saw duty as a spy, assisting Union forces that raided plantations and freed slaves along the Combahee River in South Carolina. Tubman played an outsized role in American history, a contribution that is recently (and belatedly)

Harriet Tubman has long inspired a deep sense of pride among Marylanders, especially in the rural communities of the Eastern Shore, where the former slave was born and led dozens to freedom on the Underground Railroad. While her story is taught to schoolchildren across the country and a small storefront museum here pays homage to Tubman, descendants and historians have been waiting to see her memorialized in a grander fashion. The state announced Tuesday that it had secured enough money for a state park and visitor center bearing Tubman's name, cheering advocates for the long-planned project.

Maia Woods had long wondered about the strange-looking house on Rolling Road in Rockdale, the one that sits off Liberty Road, boarded up and neglected. On Saturday, she found out about its years as a station on the Underground Railroad, how it's been moved twice in its 200-plus-year history by family members well aware of its historical importance, and how it was bought by a couple 30 years ago determined to see it preserved — even though it's been so contaminated by pesticides that no one will ever be able to live in it again.

John Hanson's spot in the U.S. Capitol is secure, but Harriet Tubman's chances of securing one are spotty. The General Assembly has been weighing whether to swap in Tubman, who helped slaves travel to freedom on the Underground Railroad, for Hanson, a Southern Maryland merchant and former president of the Continental Congress, in the National Statuary Hall Collection. Each state is allowed only two statues in the collection. Maryland has been represented since 1903 by Hanson and Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Roman Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The history of a people, with all the grief, faith and determination that entails, can be heard in the simple strains of spirituals, one of the most enduring and endearing genres of American music. This week, stellar soprano Kathleen Battle will join the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Morgan State University Choir in the premiere of a spiritual-filled program she developed celebrating the Underground Railroad. No voice in recent times is more associated with this music than Battle's.

It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave. I will take to the water. This very bay shall yet bear me into freedom. - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass He had always loved the Chesapeake Bay and enjoyed history, but for the longest time, when Vince Leggett tried to blend his twin passions, he was left with some haunting questions. "I'd read of all the shipbuilders, boat captains and shipping magnates who supposedly made bay history, most of them members of the majority community," says Leggett, a public historian and former schools administrator who lives in Annapolis.

It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave. I will take to the water. This very bay shall yet bear me into freedom. - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass H e had always loved the Chesapeake Bay and enjoyed history, but for the longest time, when Vince Leggett tried to blend his twin passions, he was left with some haunting questions. "I'd read of all the shipbuilders, boat captains and shipping magnates who supposedly made bay history, most of them members of the majority community," says Leggett, a public historian and former schools administrator who lives in Annapolis.