- [Announcer] Funding for "North to Freedom" was provided by Tompkins Community Bank, Corning Community Impact and Investment, the Community Foundation for South Central New York, the Community Foundation of Elmira-Corning and the Finger Lakes, the Community Foundation of Tompkins County.

Additional support was provided by, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] During the sweltering summer of 1937, Zora Neale Hurston, a gifted writer and anthropologist who spent years documenting the folklore and traditions of the South, set off once again across the dusty roads of rural Florida on a new assignment.

Armed with a notebook and an understanding of the region's dialects and customs, Hurston was one of the few black writers hired by the WPA's Federal Writers Project, a depression era initiative aimed at capturing the stories of those who had lived through slavery.

Her objective was clear: to preserve the testimonies of a generation whose memories were quickly fading.

Hurston listened carefully as people recounted their stories of slavery, sharing experiences that had rarely been heard beyond family circles.

At a time when Jim Crow laws dominated the landscape and black perspectives were often silenced, Hurston and the other writers gave former slaves a platform to speak openly about their lives and their experiences during a time of American slavery.

Hurston's work with the WPA would help inspire her own writing, blending the narratives she collected into her exploration of black culture and identity, uniquely bridging both anthropology and storytelling.

But remarkably, the majority of the WPA narratives, more than 2,300 of them, were forgotten and buried in the National Archives for decades, overshadowed by a world war and the nation's reluctance to confront the full scope of its past and its ongoing struggle with inclusion.

It wasn't until the 1970s and 80s that the interviews were rediscovered, researched, and published, and ultimately digitized and made available for public consumption.

As the WPA interviews resurfaced, other narratives from an earlier generation of black Americans written and recorded nearly a century before, began to emerge as well.

Stories of those who had run for freedom in the years before the Civil War, and then stood before Northern crowds, sharing their experiences, helping to inspire the growing abolitionist movement and the fight to end slavery.

As these stories and others resurfaced, a more complex and profound truth began to emerge, one that revealed a history of the Underground Railroad, long overshadowed by myths of secret rooms and hidden tunnels, a truth rooted in the lived experiences of black Americans who fought for their freedom while wielding humanity's greatest tool for change: our voice.

- I can't recall my father's face.

He was sold away when I was very young.

Masters had no qualms about separating fathers from their children, but mothers stayed with their young ones.

My mother's face, however, remains clear in my memory.

Growing up on a small farm in Maryland, the work was grueling.

The overseer, with a temper as fierce as the midday sun, took special pleasure in tormenting me, treat me like nothing more than a tool.

Yet my mother, strongest person I knew, managed to smile and shower me with love despite the hardships.

She would tell me stories from the Bible, bringing the words to life and giving me hope.

As I grew older, the work became harder and the cruelty more visible.

One day, a kind man named Samuel was whipped so badly he couldn't stand.

They left him in the field, and I had to help him back to his quarters.

I'll never forget the complete loss of hope I saw in his eyes.

After that, I felt a deep urge to escape.

I had no clear plan, only a relentless need to be far away from that farm and to be free.

I had overheard other slaves talking once in the barn about a network of people leading slaves to free states in the North.

It was just enough of a spark to give me a glimmer of hope.

After Samuel died from the beating he took, I knew I couldn't wait any longer.

I waited for a Sunday when I knew the white folks would be at church.

I packed a small bundle of food and ran into the woods.

I avoided the main roads.

And whenever fear gripped me, I would start reciting some of the Bible quotes my mother would tell me.

If I heard dogs barking in the distance at night, I would whisper, "Be strong and courageous.

"Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged, "for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go."

I found shelter in a barn just like this along the wide river.

The next morning I was awakened by the farmer and his son and I thought I was caught.

But he said right away, "You are on safe ground."

He told me to stay there in the hay loft, and his wife brought me ham and the best biscuits I ever ate in my life.

They directed me to another safe farm a few miles down the valley.

I traveled by night and hid by day, inching closer and closer to freedom.

Finally, I crossed into the North and followed the train tracks into Montrose.

I found work with a family who owned an apple orchard, and they let me build myself a small place on their land.

One day in town, I bought an old used Bible.

The ladies at the church, they're teaching me to read it.

And I'll read that Bible to my kids some day, and hope to give them the same type of courage my mother gave me.

(inspirational music fades out) (choir vocalizing) - I refer to them as sacred spaces because I think they were sacred spaces.

Any place that helped to save a life or that gave someone safety.

And it was not always a hidden room.

Sometimes those ideas are romanticized.

Often someone was allowed to sleep overnight in the barn and the farmer might just look the other way.

I mean, imagine not only the weather people had to deal with coming through here would never have been in this weather before.

Imagine maybe you're barefoot or maybe your shoes have three holes in them and you don't know what to do.

You're freezing and there's a dog chasing you.

And then you just, "Here's a place.

"Here, rest.

"Tomorrow you have to go, "but lay your head down here and rest.

"And oh, here's a blanket."

That's a sacred space because it saved a life or just gave someone peace.

Peace and rest, even if just for a few hours.

- [Narrator] Few chapters in American history speak to our capacity for moral courage and the inextinguishable power of collective resistance as clearly as the story of the Underground Railroad.

For nearly two centuries now, tales surrounding the secret network that helped guide enslaved African Americans to freedom have remained a constant source of fascination.

Yet the Underground Railroad remains one of the most misunderstood and misrepresentative events from our nation's past, often reduced to dramatic tales of solo flights of escape with freedom just out of reach.

While cinematically powerful, they often overshadow the true, complex, and diverse realities of what the Underground Railroad truly was.

- When we think of escape, we're often thinking of what we might see in a movie or something like that where you have an enslaved person just escaping through the brush or through a swamp or something like that, followed by dogs and slave catchers and so on.

So that's the image that we usually get.

That's the romanticizing.

But there are ways in which romanticizing the Underground Railroad becomes where we're less attentive to the detailed documentation, and more thinking about a sort of emotional kind of response to the activity itself.

- [Narrator] For much of the 20th century, the contribution of Black Americans and the story of the Underground Railroad were rarely taught in US history classes.

It wasn't until after the Civil Rights Movement and well into the 1970s and 80s that Black American icons like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass began to appear in high school textbooks.

Over that time, the conventional narrative of the Underground Railroad became largely focused on reported hidden rooms and subterranean tunnels built and operated by well-meaning white abolitionist allies.

- The mythology of the Underground Railroad, the obsession with literal tunnels as opposed to just metaphorical tunnels, developed during the long, long Jim Crow era in the United States, when the whole history of abolitionism was almost scrubbed out of American memory.

Over generations of erasure of that history, myths bloomed.

- The history of the abolition movement has been popularly understood as mainly a movement of middle class white northerners.

And we haven't paid that much attention to abolition as this radical interracial social movement in which African Americans, especially fugitive slaves, played an important part.

- The Underground Railroad isn't about tunnels, it's not about weird hiding places, it's not about alleged quilt maps, another myth.

The Underground Railroad is really about people.

What's important about it is who the people were who worked in the Underground Railroad, what they did for freedom seekers.

The interaction between African Americans and white Americans, it was the first biracial social and political movement in American history (poignant music) - [Narrator] Driven by the moral conviction and courage of those who ignored severe punishment, the Underground Railroad evolved into a crucial extension of the abolitionist movement.

While New York City and the New England region are often recognized as crucial hubs of the Underground Railroad, the towns and cities of Pennsylvania and upstate New York played an equally essential and often overlooked role in this vast network.

In the rural landscapes of central and southern New York, where agriculture dominated, many freedom seekers would find refuge among the thousands of farms and barns that populated the region.

These towns and villages became a vital stop along the way, offering food, shelter, and guidance.

Serving as a pivotal alternate route, the region became a beacon of hope for many freedom seekers.

Across the state, organized vigilance committees emerged, gathering resources and relaying critical information to aid fugitives, all while evading local officials and slave catchers.

Operating in defiance of federal laws, these committees were essential to the success and safety of those escape efforts.

- They had on call anti-slavery lawyers and politicians to defend freedom seekers.

These were very organized affairs.

- There you have people from all walks of life, some abolitionists, some members of churches, farmers, things like that, who are working towards what they call practical abolition.

And in that sort of activity, they're interested in getting freedom seekers from one place to another, from one safe house to another.

That's worth mentioning because it allows us to see the vigilance committees as these intelligence networks.

- The networks were very strong, very tight, but very, very much not public.

Very privately held information.

- We can learn from the Underground Railroad, the power of what a unified front can be.

And it wasn't about the unifying of African Americans, and it wasn't about the Quakers unifying.

It was about having a common mindset in a community.

- [Narrator] More than anything else, the story of the Underground Railroad is the story of the individuals who, under the most threatening conditions, gathered the courage within themselves to run for freedom, and upon reaching liberation, chose to use their voices and share their powerful testimonies that laid bare the evils of slavery and helped reshape the conscience of the nation.

- One of the things that is so moving to me about the Underground Railroad is it's a story that takes place at one of the darkest times in our history.

Not only is this an America in which slavery is legal, but it's an America in which slavery seems to be on the march, where it seems like the slaveholders are winning.

They're getting concessions.

They're moving into the west in a way that had been unimaginable before.

All of this is troubling and was deeply disturbing to the people who were then engaged in this work of aiding fugitive slaves.

So what they were doing was doing their best in dark times.

And I think that's really powerful, this idea that people are willing to just risk these things knowing that it might not, they're not gonna win necessarily in a broader sense, but that they can help people today.

That you can do something today to help someone, and that's a meaningful act.

(wind whooshing) (poignant music fades out) ♪ Walk with me, Lord ♪ ♪ Walk with me ♪ ♪ Walk with me, Lord ♪ ♪ Walk with me ♪ ♪ While I'm on this Christian journey ♪ ♪ I want Jesus ♪ ♪ To walk with me ♪ (poignant music) - [Narrator] "I have often been utterly astonished "to find persons who speak of the singing among slaves "as evidence of their contentment and happiness.

"It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake.

"Slaves sing when they are most unhappy.

"The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart, "and he is relieved by them "only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears."

Frederick Douglass.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] From its earliest days, slavery was woven into the fabric of America.

Beginning on an August morning in 1619 when the pirate ship White Lion anchored off the Virginia coast and sold 20 African captives to eager colonists, a brutal practice was established, one that would persist for the next 246 years.

The forced labor of enslaved people would fuel the New World's prosperity, while simultaneously sowing deep divisions.

The southern economy deeply entrenched in agriculture, heavily dependent on the institution.

Vast plantations growing cotton, tobacco, and sugar required an enormous labor force.

The northern states were complicit in slavery as well, with their factories transforming slave-grown cotton into textiles, and thousands of enslaved individuals laboring in private homes and small businesses.

On July 4th, 1776, as the Declaration of Independence was being formally adopted, over 20,000 enslaved people were held captive in New York, the largest enslaved population in any northern state.

British writer Samuel Johnson remarked in 1775, "How is it that the loudest yelps for liberty "come from the drivers of Negroes?"

Benjamin Franklin echoed this sentiment, calling slavery "an atrocious debasement of human nature "that has no place in a free society."

By the mid 1700s, preachers like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield began stirring anti-slavery sentiments by emphasizing spiritual equality and highlighting its moral contradictions.

This awakening planted seeds of doubt about the institution, particularly in the North.

As the American Revolution unfolded, the inconsistency of upholding slavery in a fight for liberty became increasingly indefensible.

Finally, in 1777, Vermont became the first state to outlaw slavery.

And by 1784, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island had all enacted legislation for the gradual abolition of slavery.

(wind whooshing) (flowing music) On a snowy February night in 1785, 17 men gathered in the dining room of a small inn in New York City.

The meeting was led by John Jay, who would soon become America's first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Jay had assembled the city's most influential men to confront the rampant kidnapping and sale of free African Americans on the streets of New York.

Also in the room where it happened that night was 30-year-old Alexander Hamilton.

They would called themselves the New York Manumission Society, and along with pledging to take steps to protect the city's free black population, they would call for the gradual emancipation of all of New York's enslaved.

Despite the society's lofty agenda, the group was riddled with contradictions.

Many of its members, including John Jay, were themselves slaveholders.

When Alexander Hamilton proposed a resolution that would require all members to immediately free their slaves, it was voted down.

Yet the society would fight for the rights of abused, free, and enslaved blacks, providing legal counsel to those in need.

In 1787, the society would found New York's African Free School, actively donating and raising funds for teachers and supplies.

Despite heavy resistance from the state's business and political elites, the group persisted.

Ultimately, in 1799, New York finally initiated a gradual emancipation.

But it would be another 28 years before all of New York state's soil was completely free.

(flowing music fades out) (poignant music) In the early decades of the 19th century, a cold divide settled over the United States.

While the North had largely marched toward freedom, the rest of the nation hesitated or outwardly refused.

Early whispers of abolition were heard, mostly among Quakers, where moral and religious convictions sparked quiet discussions.

Yet these conversations remained on the fringes, far from becoming a widespread movement.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, while drawing a line across the southern territory to limit the spread of slavery.

Though it was meant to quell tensions, it only fanned the flames of discord, deepening the nation's divide.

- Lots of folks at the time recognized that this was a sign of deep divisions in American society, and that it suggested that those divisions, despite the Missouri Compromise, were not gonna go away.

So certainly there is a turning point.

There is a transformation of American abolitionism from an earlier phase into this more radical, confrontational phase.

- [Narrator] "On the subject of slavery, "I do not wish to think or speak or write with moderation.

"I will not equivocate.

"I will not excuse.

"I will not retreat a single inch.

"And I will be heard."

William Lloyd Garrison, (flowing music) - [Narrator] Long before he began publishing "The Liberator," William Lloyd Garrison had already condemned America's complicity in slavery as a moral outrage that could no longer be tolerated.

He called the US Constitution "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell," referring to its provisions that protected slavery.

Garrison's abolitionist movement evolved from words to action, rallying support across New England.

Large anti-slavery meetings and fiery rallies attracted thousands, uniting people in the call for an end to slavery.

As their resolve deepened, so too did their reach, spreading westward into upstate New York and beyond, where the spirit of reform was already taking root.

(birds chirping) (calm music) In the crisp autumn air of October 10th, 1821, a young lawyer named Charles Grandison Finney set out for a walk in the woods near Adams, New York.

Finney had been attending the local Presbyterian church where the Reverend George Gale preached to a congregation steeped in Calvinist tradition.

But unlike many around him, Finney had yet to experience a personal religious awakening.

But on that day, as the leaves crunched beneath his feet, something profound stirred within him.

Finney realized that salvation was a matter of personal choice.

(birds chirping continues) (calm music continues) - On this day, Finney discovered that he had to choose between salvation and damnation.

And there he has this conversion experience, personal experience.

Comes back to his law office.

A potential client comes in.

Finney says, "Sir, I cannot take your case.

"I have a retainer from the Lord."

- [Narrator] Starting in 1825 and for the next decade, Finney became a force of nature, a preacher of unparalleled passion and influence.

- He's 10 Billy Grahams rolled into one.

He crisscrosses upstate New York.

Utica revivals, significant revivals in Rochester.

He used his skill as a lawyer to argue the case for salvation.

He reasoned people, as it were.

And this region became christened the burnt or burned over district.

Finney coined that term because by the time he left, he said almost every community had been burnt.

The fires of the gospel preaching had purged them, and there wasn't much more work he could do.

- This encouraged people to change their own lives.

They realized that becoming, having an ecstatic experience and becoming saved could actually change a whole person's lifestyle.

And that morphed into the notion that if it could happen for individuals, maybe we together could make it happen for society and change the immoral quality of a society that supports slavery.

- These were the ways in which more discussion about slavery being immoral came into the public sphere.

So the onus was really on abolitionists and others to think of, "Well, slavery is wrong.

"How do we communicate that?

"How do we get people to change their minds?"

Or not just change their minds, they might have thought that slavery was wrong, but just how to have them move in the direction of abolishing slavery.

♪ Wade in the water ♪ ♪ Wade in the water, children ♪ ♪ Wade in the water ♪ ♪ God's gonna trouble the water ♪ - [Narrator] The black community didn't need revivals and religious awakenings to teach them that slavery was immoral.

And as the abolitionist movement gained momentum among white allies, African Americans skillfully harnessed that wave to amplify their voices and push the movement forward.

- African Americans absolutely drove the expansion of abolition.

So we know that exposure to free black communities was formative for people like William Lloyd Garrison.

That it was exposure to these communities that essentially radicalized them.

We also know that black subscribers support early abolitionist newspapers financially.

There's a way in which black abolitionists are sort of pushing their white colleagues to more and more aggressive, more and more radical kinds of abolition.

♪ Oh, freedom ♪ ♪ Oh, freedom ♪ - [Narrator] The African American population in the North understood that slavery would never end with words alone.

It demanded real action.

In churches, meeting halls and private gatherings, they urged white northerners to confront the evils of slavery firsthand, drawing new recruits into the growing ranks of abolitionists.

As more people joined the cause, they found themselves woven into a secret network that had already been set quietly in motion for years.

(wind whooshing) (poignant music) Identifying the exact origins of the Underground Railroad has proved challenging.

Its roots are tangled in the shadows of history where secrecy was essential and records are scarce.

But contemporary historians largely agree, its most likely beginnings can be traced back to the early years of the 19th century, in the same city that had already played a pivotal role in the nation's fight for independence: Philadelphia.

- Why in Philadelphia?

Because there was a unique synergy.

It had a very large population of anti-slavery Quakers.

Quakers were the first organized group of any type in the United States to declare themselves opposed to slavery, and then commit themselves to doing what they could to undermine slavery.

And that involved assisting people trying to escape from it.

So you had Quakers on one hand, and you had a very large population of free African Americans.

So you had these two groups working together, interacting in Philadelphia.

- [Narrator] Among the earliest figures to shape the Underground Railroad was Quaker Isaac Tatem Hopper, who, from his small bookshop in the heart of the city, crafted ingenious strategies to help freedom seekers elude capture.

- He pioneered these techniques that became typical, establishing safe houses, moving people from place to place to keep them safe.

Isaac Tatem Hopper in Philadelphia also pioneered the use of disguises, disguising people's face color with powder so that the two rather elite looking white women were actually two black men.

These techniques, which seem obvious now, but they had to be invented.

And they were invented by this group in Philadelphia, and then came to be used elsewhere.

- [Narrator] By the year 1830, when the Baltimore and Ohio railroad opened its first 13 mile stretch of track, another network moving in the shadows had quietly and quickly taken shape.

This clandestine operation transporting African Americans to freedom, would be branded with the same language of the railways, as stations, conductors, and passengers became the code for those risking everything to escape slavery.

While the rest of the nation looked to the real railroad and the future of steam and steel, the Underground Railroad focused on a different destination, guiding men and women toward freedom.

- So you had routes going from Maryland and Delaware to Southern Pennsylvania, and from there going on either to Massachusetts or to upstate New York and then on to Canada.

These were routes, mainly because the abolitionists organized in vigilance committees and anti-slavery societies and female anti-slavery societies had made these points nodes of Underground Railroad activism.

- One of the concepts that we don't think about in terms of the Underground Railroad has been the vigilance committee.

There you have people from all walks of life, some abolitionists, some members of churches, farmers, things like that, who are working towards what they call practical abolition.

And in that sort of activity, they're interested in getting freedom seekers from one place to another, from one safe house to another.

They're doing that activity, and they're actually the ones that are doing the labor, right, of saving people on the Underground Railroad.

And I think that's worth mentioning because it allows us to see the vigilance committees as sort of these intelligence networks.

- [Narrator] The real power behind the Underground Railroad was never secret hiding places or tunnels of escape, but in the flesh and blood construction of the network itself, which was driven by the courage and determination of those who made it work.

Leaders in the black community exchanged information with their white counterparts to create a flow of knowledge that would be filtered from business and trading areas of towns and cities to the most remote farmhouses.

Messages passed through church congregations, largely by word of mouth, which carried crucial updates on the movement of bounty hunters, and the safest routes north.

This network, more than a collection of stops on a map, was a living, breathing organism, flexible, resilient, and always adapting.

Together, they forged a chain of communication and cooperation that would come to define the Underground Railroad.

(steam hissing) (train whistle blows) On September 3rd, 1838, disguising himself as a sailor, 20-year-old Frederick Bailey bordered a northbound train traveling from Baltimore to Philadelphia.

Along the way, he was aided by several individuals willing to break the law to help him escape.

After reaching freedom and ultimately settling in Rochester, New York, he adopted a new name, leaving behind a slave named Bailey, and stepping into the role of a powerful advocate for abolition named Frederick Douglass.

Douglass's and later Harriet Tubman's escape would become two of the most well-known stories tied to the Underground Railroad.

But as the network grew and more former slaves seized their freedom, many other men and women would become some of the loudest and most influential voices.

- Fugitive slaves play an extremely important part in the growth of the abolition movement.

You can see right from the start of what I call the second wave of abolition in the 1830s, how fugitive slaves fed into the movement, radicalized its tactics, and introduced a kind of grassroots activism to the movement that was extremely important.

They also wrote their stories about slavery and their escape from slavery.

And it was not easy for southern slave holders to dismiss their views because they had actually firsthand experiences of slavery and they could talk about family separations and the tortures that they had experienced.

They were immediately recruited by abolitionists in the abolitionist lecture circuit.

They literally brought the atrocities of slavery to view.

(poignant music) - I worked the needle and thread day in and day out in a small sewing room tucked behind the main house.

The master's wife had me mending clothes and stitching fine dresses for her and her daughters.

It was delicate work and I was good at it, but every stitch was still like a chain binding me to a life I didn't choose.

There was a girl younger than me who worked beside me.

She had a spark in her eyes, a defiance that was dangerous in a place like this.

One day she whispered to me about a man who helped people like us escape.

She had heard it from the washer woman who knew a blacksmith who had gone north.

The story seemed like a fairytale, too good to be true, but it stayed with me.

The day I decided to run was the day the master's wife slapped me for pricking her daughter with a pin.

It was an accident, but her face twisted and she got so angry, she struck me hard across the cheek.

My vision blurred with tears, but I kept sewing, kept my head down, but inside something snapped.

That night when everyone was asleep, I crept out of the sewing room.

I had nothing but the clothes on my back and a small bundle of food I had been hiding away.

I didn't know where I was going, only that I couldn't stay.

The young girl had told me about a house not far from here, where the lantern in the window signaled a safe place.

I prayed it was true.

I found the house just as she described.

The lantern was lit.

An older woman opened the door, her eyes full of worry, but also understanding.

She fed me.

She gave me water and hid me in the root cellar.

For weeks, I moved from place to place, always under the cover of night, my heart pounding every time I heard a noise in the dark.

But I never looked back.

I couldn't.

When I finally crossed into free territory, it didn't feel real.

The air was just as cold, the ground just as hard, but something had shifted.

I was no longer a piece of property.

I was a person.

I eventually found work as a seamstress at a small shop.

As I piece together my new life, I truly believe that one day we'll all know freedom.

Until then, I'll keep sewing, keep hoping, and keep living each day remembering the strength that brought me here.

(poignant music continues) - Most northerners were not thinking much about slavery.

None of the tortures, abuses, or the sale of enslaved people, the breaking up of families, none of that was visible to most average white northern citizens.

And that's why those narratives, those letters that they wrote in abolitionist newspapers, those stories that they told are so important because it helped to shatter that racist complacency.

- Those narratives have highlighted the strength and grit and determination of African Americans during a time span when every human right had been snatched away.

- This was very popular.

I mean, people would come to these lectures, and often they'd be in churches, but other places, other civic organizations.

So somebody like Equiano, otherwise known as Gustavus Vassa, very famous narrative that he wrote.

There's some key ones, there are many of them, but the ones that were particularly moving were the ones that people actually had an experience.

They can say, "I was enslaved."

And it changes everything, and it really did move the needle.

- I was sold when I was 13 or 14, I don't remember.

It was right after my mother died.

I was brought to a tobacco farm in Northern Virginia.

I mostly worked in the kitchen, but I also planted, weeded, pulled up rocks, some so big I could barely lift them.

The field master left me alone for the most part, only 'cause he knew I helped cooked his food.

But he was beyond cruel to others.

The ones he decided he didn't like, he used a leather strap tied to a stick, saying he liked the way it swung better than a whip.

Despite everything, I refused to let it break me.

I clung to the hope that one day I will be free from that kitchen, and that field, of the burns and blisters.

One day at the provision store in town, I overheard two men talking about people who helped slaves escape to the North.

I didn't know it then, but those men wanted me to hear what they were saying.

They looked for people like me and pretended to talk to each other.

They were part of the network.

Over the next few months, whenever I was sent to gather items, I listened carefully, piecing together bits of information about possible routes and safe farms.

One day in town, a kind lady handed me a little prairie doll and told me to keep it.

It was the first gift anyone had ever given me.

I named her Sylvia after my mother.

I bided my time, stowing away what little supplies I could, and mentally preparing myself to run.

The nights were the hardest, lying awake, planning my escape while trying to muffle the sound of my racing heart.

One night when there was no moon, I slipped away with my small bundle of food and Sylvia clutched tightly in my hand.

I mostly traveled at night, hiding in the thickest parts of the woods during the day.

I was told to look for dead tree branches stuck in the ground to signal a path to a safe farm.

Late one afternoon, I reached a small house tucked at the edge of the woods.

There was a candle in their barn window.

A woman and her husband took me in offering me food, water, and a safe place to rest.

The next morning, when it was time to move on, they gave me new clothes, a small bundle of dried pork.

I was taken to a church with free people who looked like me, welcomed me with kindness.

They gave me information and some money for the train.

Then very quickly, I was moved to a safe barn about a mile from the railroad depot to wait until early the next morning.

That night before I was led to the train that would carry me farther north, (lady exhales) I carefully placed that little prairie doll up on a beam (chuckles) way up in the barn.

I hope that another young woman might find it and that it will bring her the same strength and comfort it had given me.

I wish for her to feel the warmth of the kindness that had touched my own journey, and to know that even in the darkest times, there is always hope and compassion waiting to light the way.

(poignant music continues) ♪ Walk together children ♪ ♪ Don't you get weary ♪ ♪ Walk together children ♪ ♪ Don't you get weary ♪ ♪ Walk together children ♪ ♪ Don't you get weary ♪ ♪ There's a great camp meeting in the promised land ♪ ♪ Oh, sing together ♪ - [Narrator] By the 1840s, traffic on the Underground Railroad had steadily increased.

Exact numbers will never be known, but it had grown enough to become a serious thorn in the side of southern slave holders.

The network offered hope for the enslaved.

But even with that, the decision to flee was far from easy.

It required more than just a desire for freedom.

It demanded a deep resolve to face the unknown, no matter the cost.

- In order for freedom seekers to make that first move, we have to understand their courage.

Because first of all, they understand specifically that if they're caught they will be severely punished.

They could be thrown into prison.

They could be on the auction block.

It was a heart-rending decision on the part of freedom seekers because they had to think, "Yes, I might be leaving, "but I'm leaving behind friends and family."

And very often it was the case of friends because slavery decimated families and kinship networks.

So the sort of networks they would make with friends were extremely important to them.

- They're leaving, they're protesting with their feet.

They're literally leaving these plantations and they're willing to choose death, literally willing to face death if they can't be free.

(wind whooshing) - The flight to freedom was extremely dangerous.

It was very risky.

Many people in the 19th century who escaped didn't have shoes, they didn't have socks, they didn't have anything to protect them from the elements.

So the winter time was considered to be one of the safest times to leave in terms of not being caught.

Why?

Well, you have fewer hours of daylight.

So that meant that you could travel more.

Freedom seekers typically traveled at night.

There's one woman named Rachel Harris who left from Cecil County, Maryland.

And she was wearing a traditional dress that enslaved women wore in the area, which was made of tow fabric.

(lightning crashes) (rain falling) This was a really rough burlap sack type material.

So when she left during this rainstorm, the rain pelted down so hard that the material rubbed against her skin and literally ripped her flesh off.

So when she arrived to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, her arms were bloody as she was carrying her child.

(poignant music) - They might run into people, let's say, white Americans, and they have no clue if they would be supported, arrested.

And they're fully aware of the ways in which their aspect from traveling through the forests might be unkempt, and they would be spotted here as a runaway, which already opens them up to an economy of bounty hunters and slave catchers.

They had to put themselves into the hands of complete strangers.

- Arriving to a safe house was about so much more than just hiding.

These were medical stations, stations to revive people.

They were places where people were treated with a level of humanity that they probably have never experienced before in their lives.

Caring for them, wrapping the wounds, what message did that send to them?

You matter.

- An assistance took so many forms.

It's not just hiding, you know.

You could give them a haircut, give them new clothes so that they won't be immediately perceived as a runaway.

Or in Lewiston, a tailor who, he would create these very bright colored coats for bounty hunters so they could be seen from a distance.

Or somebody making food or somebody collecting that one penny a week.

All of these were different ways.

You didn't have to be an abolitionist, right, to be able to assist in this, if you were a person of conscience thinking about the immorality of slavery.

- [Dionne] A lot of people went through the Valley Forge area, up through Bucks County and then made it through the Northeast Extension.

When you think about the back routes that you might take to Binghamton, those side roads going through Springville and Montrose, those areas were heavily populated with Underground Railroad stations and agents.

(poignant music) - [Narrator] By the 1840s, the Underground Railroad's presence in Montrose had grown into a well-established network.

21 known agents from Susquehanna County played an active role in aiding enslaved individuals on their perilous journey.

As the network strengthened, Montrose became an important hub for freedom seekers, offering a crucial route north into the southern tier and further upstate New York.

- From Montrose there were three fingers of freedom out of Montrose.

One went over to Owego, and from there folks would go to Elmira, Ithaca, Auburn.

The other path up out of Montrose we know it as Vessel 26, all right, and up through Union, Maine.

The third finger of freedom out of Montrose would be present day Pennsylvania Avenue, coming up through there and say Front Street and on up through to Green and to Peterborough.

We're the thoroughfare here in Broome County for the Underground Railroad - [Narrator] In Binghamton, Dr. Stephen Hand, a passionate abolitionist and founder of the city's anti-slavery society, opened his Collier Street home to shelter those seeking freedom.

Just blocks away two churches established in 1838, the Bethel Church and what would later become Trinity AME Zion, served as vital sanctuaries for freedom seekers.

Trinity, in particular, would become a cornerstone of this powerful network of support in the growing village.

- My church was a big part of the Underground Railroad, the anti-slavery movement.

And the abolitionists, the great abolitionists came out of the AME Zion Organization.

Our early founder was one Bishop Varick, and he was also a self-freed person at one time.

He and some other very brave men, at the risk of their own lives, they broke away from the white Methodist church, started the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

And they sent missionaries all points north to aid and abet the freedom finders and to educate, as well as usher people to safety and freedom, to educate.

And I was just so proud of that, and the others that came out of Zion as well, Frederick Douglass and other wonderful examples of the same.

- [Narrator] In Whitney Point, refuge could be found at George Seymour's house on Collins Street.

While the Cyrus Gates house in the town of Maine became renowned for its hidden room, used to protect those seeking freedom.

To the west in Tioga County, William Warner, Thomas Farrington, and Hammon Pinney provided shelter in the village of Owego.

While a short wagon ride away in the town of Spencer, Lyman Bradley's home on Main Street became a critical stop on the path to freedom.

As the fingers of freedom stretched across upstate New York, this hidden network of small towns and quiet villages became a transformative force driven by courageous individuals whose quiet acts of defiance shaped history and the fight for liberty.

(rhythmic music) On a cloudy late spring night in June of 1844, five men quietly slipped away from a Leesburg, Virginia plantation.

For the next month they traveled mostly by night on foot following river banks and moving through dense forest, steadily making their way north.

In Maryland, the men barely escaped a trap set by bounty hunters intent on returning themselves to certain punishment.

By early July, starving and exhausted, the five men collapsed onto mounds of hay in the barn at Nathaniel Smith's South Creek farm.

The next morning when they were discovered, Mrs. Smith made them breakfast, tended to their wounds, and provided crucial information to help guide them to their final stop that was just a few miles north in Elmira.

Among the group was 27-year-old John W. Jones.

Born into slavery in 1817 on the Leesburg plantation he had just fled, Jones would later admit he had been relatively fortunate.

The Ellzey family, who owned the plantation, were generally kind to their slaves, just not kind enough to grant them freedom.

Jones had grown close to the matriarch, Sally Ellzey, and considered her a friend.

But by 1844, Sally was elderly.

And Jones knew that once she was gone, his fate would be uncertain.

That's when Jones and his two stepbrothers, George and Charles, conspired with two other men from a nearby plantation to flee for the North.

(steady music) In the 1830s and 40s, churches across the North were fracturing over the divisive issue of slavery.

Elmira's Presbyterian community was no different.

In 1846, 41 abolitionist members of the First Presbyterian Church petitioned church leaders to take a stand against slavery.

The group was led by Jervis Langdon and his wife Olivia, who had grown up in abolitionist homes, and in 1838 had helped shelter Frederick Douglass on his journey north to freedom.

- And they got a real first person feeling from him, what he was running away from.

And I think it really energized them to really wanna do something.

And they realized that they could assist as white abolitionists the already engaged black abolitionist community within Elmira.

- [Narrator] When the First Presbyterian Church leadership refused to take a stand against slavery, the Langdons and their fellow abolitionists broke away to form their own church, which in a few years would become known as Elmira's Park Church.

John W. Jones, the newly established Park Church, and Jervis and Olivia Langdon would soon become pivotal forces in helping transform Elmira into a key stop along the Underground Railroad.

Their efforts would take on even greater urgency after Congress passed a law that would change everything, ushering in the most critical and perilous years of the Underground Railroad.

(poignant music) In the spring of 1846, President James Polk was looking for a fight.

He had campaigned on the promise to expand American territory to the Pacific Ocean.

When Mexico refused to sell, he chose a more aggressive approach and sent a force of men into a disputed territory along the Rio Grande.

On April 25th, shots were fired, US soldiers were killed, and the American president got just what he wanted, a reason to declare war on Mexico.

The conflict unfolded swiftly with the better equipped and disciplined American military quickly overwhelming the Mexican army.

By the time the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848, the United States had gained all the territory Polk had originally sought.

But with the victory came the question no one could ignore.

Would slavery spread into these new territories?

By the summer of 1850, Congress was working to hammer out a settlement to ease the mounting tension between North and South.

The compromise aimed to strike a delicate balance, admitting California as a free state, while addressing the status of the newly-acquired territories and the divide over slavery.

The expanding influence of the Underground Railroad infuriated southern plantation owners.

Many northern states had passed personal liberty laws to protect escape slaves and those who aided them, further escalating tensions.

Southern states insisted that any compromise needed to include federal intervention to crush abolitionists and dismantle the Underground Railroad.

By August of 1850, word began to spread that what Congress was proposing was a federal policy so heavily skewed towards slavery, that it would strip away the most basic rights from anyone accused of once being a slave.

Under the proposed law, the accused wouldn't be able to testify on their own behalf at hearings to determine their status.

This meant that even free blacks falsely claimed as escaped slaves had no legal recourse to prove their freedom.

To make matters worse, the federal commissioners overseeing these cases would be paid twice as much to rule a person a slave than to declare them free.

A twisted incentive that made human lives little more than a transaction.

For free Blacks in the North, the law opened the door to kidnappers who would seize them off the streets and sell them into slavery legally or otherwise.

Additionally, Northerners, regardless of their views on slavery, would be forced to aid slave catchers in the pursuit and capture of anyone they labeled a runaway.

- The Northerners could actually be deputized by federal marshals to participate in the capture of slaves, even if they didn't want to or didn't believe in it.

- That was the federal government saying to the community, "We are now making you responsible "for the capture of any African American "that you think might be a fugitive slave."

That meant that if you look like the person on this flyer, and I am a white person, I'm a person in authority, and I say, this is you, this is you.

- This infuriated many Northerners about the federal government's interfering with their quest for freedom and making them work to perpetuate slavery.

So it acted as a massive recruiting tool for Northerners into the anti-slavery movement.

(birds chirping) (flowing music) - [Narrator] On August 22nd, as Congress prepared to vote on the controversial Compromise of 1850, set to include the new draconian Fugitive Slave Act, Ezra Greenleaf Weld loaded his camera and a pouch of specially treated copper plates into his wagon.

He was headed to a nearby apple orchard in Cazenovia, New York, where an urgent and historic gathering was taking place.

Weld was a daguerreotypist, a pre-photography image specialist.

He was also a passionate abolitionist who was about to capture one of the most iconic images of the Underground Railroad era.

Cazenovia was part of Madison County, which by 1850 had become a known safe haven for freedom seekers, largely because of the efforts of one of the Underground Railroad's greatest benefactors, Gerrit Smith, who lived just down the road from Cazenovia in the village of Peterboro.

- The Underground Railroad was important in Peterboro simply because of the residence here of Gerrit Smith.

Without him as the station master and his family in supportive roles, the Underground Railroad never would've existed here.

- [Narrator] By 1850, Gerrit Smith had risen to become one of the wealthiest men in New York state, amassing a fortune through inheritance of his father's extensive land trading company.

After graduating from Hamilton College, Smith purchased the business from his father and expanded it into an even greater empire.

- And he becomes wealthy enough that he wants to do something with his money to help people who are oppressed.

And he started to fund the activities of especially the abolition movement in the early 1830s.

And there were people out there that were working hard at it already, and he began to target his money to them.

He had the one resource that everybody needed no matter what they were doing: money - Gerrit Smith considered slavery a sin, as virtually all anti-slavery activists did.

And that moral and spiritual imperative was one of the things that drove them.

Gerrit Smith, fortunately, was in a position because of his wealth to do a lot.

He spread his money very widely.

He would donate money whenever asked for anti-slavery activity.

- [Narrator] Smith began funneling financial resources to abolitionist societies and vigilance committees supporting Underground Railroad activity.

And as word spread, the tiny village of Peterboro, New York became a critical hub for those seeking freedom through the Underground Railroad.

- In Peterboro, it was accessed by word of mouth, so they had to follow the word of someone who had said, "Follow that road.

"It will take you to a place called Peterboro.

"When you get there, ask for a person named Gerrit Smith."

And they were probably not in Peterboro, for instance, any longer than a few hours, or maybe if the weather was bad, a day.

And probably as many as approximately a thousand former slaves came through Peterboro.

- [Narrator] Gerrit Smith's work in Peterboro had already established the village as a vital hub for the Underground Railroad, when he and Frederick Douglass found themselves drawn into each other's orbit.

Meeting for the first time in the 1840s, they formed a bond rooted in their unwavering commitment to ending slavery.

Smith would go on to fund much of Douglass's anti-slavery writings and field work, forging a vital partnership that became a cornerstone of the abolitionist movement and strengthened the Underground Railroad's mission.

(poignant music) When the two men learned of the new Fugitive Slave Bill being drafted in Congress, they took swift action and organized a gathering of over 2,000 abolitionists, including 50 individuals who had seized their own freedom.

It was on that bright August afternoon that Ezra Greenleaf Weld set up his camera and carefully exposed his copper plates, capturing the iconic image of Gerrit Smith alongside Frederick Douglass, and surrounded by dozens of other formerly enslaved individuals, each of them vowing to fight for the end of slavery regardless of any morally corrupt and oppressive laws imposed upon them.

The event later known as The Fugitive Slave Convention, was a powerful protest against the new Fugitive Slave Law being debated in Congress.

- So at this convention, they issue a statement to those still enslaved, which was very radical.

And it in essence said, "Take your freedom into your own hands."

- [Narrator] "The best way "to make the Fugitive Slave Law a dead letter, "is to make half a dozen or more dead kidnappers.

"There is no justice here for the black man "except for his own right arm."

Frederick Douglass.

- So this is indicative of the emotion that was created by that Fugitive Slave Bill.

The ground is set now for something dramatic to happen.

(flowing music) - [Narrator] On October 1st, 1851, just months after the Fugitive Slave Law took effect, a barrel maker named William Henry, known as Jerry during his time in slavery, was seized by federal marshals in Syracuse where he was living as a free man.

Henry was shackled and taken to a holding cell with orders he be returned to slavery in Missouri.

At that same moment, a convention of the Abolitionist Liberty party, attended by Frederick Douglass and Gerrit Smith, was taking place nearby.

News of William Henry's capture spread quickly across the convention floor.

At eight o'clock that night, a group of abolitionists armed with weapons from a local hardware store stormed the jail where Henry was being held.

- And they physically tore Jerry Henry out of the arms of the commissioner and his minions, passed him over their heads down a flight of stairs out into the town city square, and brandished him in front of all people, Daniel Webster, who was then representing the federal government as an advocate for the Fugitive Slave Law, brandished him physically and carried him away.

And to make a long story short, Jerry Henry was kept in different secret places by the Underground Railroad, and eventually did wind up in Canada.

- [Narrator] The events in Syracuse, later known as the Jerry Rescue, revealed with certainty that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 had only strengthened Northern abolitionist's resolve, intensifying their resistance and pushing the country closer to the brink of civil war.

- Think of Antebellum America in the 1850s as a kind of social war zone where there is vigorous opposition to slavery steadily growing all the time, and also pro-Southern sentiment on the part of white Northerners who just don't care about slavery, and they found abolitionists objectionable because they were non-conformists.

So this is a warring landscape, politically, socially warring landscape.

(rain pelting) - [Narrator] On the night of May 18th, 1854, a steady, heavy rain fell over Philadelphia.

It seemed a fitting end to an already terrible day for William Still.

Few people understood better than William Still just how divided and volatile America had become over the issue of slavery.

Over the last decade, Still had helped hundreds navigate the treacherous journey to freedom, including the Underground Railroad's most frequent traveler, Harriet Tubman.

But the railroad had suffered a tragic breakdown.

Three men Still had arranged transport to Canada, had been captured at a transfer point in New York City where they were arrested and shackled, marked as runaways and sent back south to unknown fates.

William Still realized the route through New York City had been compromised.

So on that dreary spring night in 1854, Still would choose to abandon the route through New York City in favor of a more secure and trusted path that led through Elmira, New York, where John W. Jones had built one of the Underground Railroad's most effective and prolific routes to safety.

♪ Swing low sweet chariot ♪ ♪ Coming for to carry me home ♪ ♪ Swing low sweet chariot ♪ ♪ Coming for to carry me home ♪ - [Narrator] Since his arrival in Elmira, John W. Jones had emerged as the central figure in the town's Underground Railroad activities.

He built a wide reaching network of collaborators within Elmira's abolitionist community, forging strong ties with influential allies like Jervis and Olivia Langdon, and the immensely popular, larger-than-life minister of the Park Church, Thomas K. Beecher.

- Beecher was so well loved, and he had so many community connections.

He was interested in kind of being a catalyst.

He was kind of a middleman between the wealthy patrons who were members of his congregation, who had the means, and needing to reach out to folks like John W. Jones, who was our conductor on the Underground Railroad in Elmira.

- [Narrator] With critical financial support, John W. Jones established a carefully coordinated system to protect freedom seekers as they moved north, working closely with William Still in Philadelphia to create a seamless connection in the Underground Railroad network.

- So the Freedom Seekers would come to him in groups of 2, 4, 6, up to 30 at one point, and he would actually shelter them in his home.

And he would go to other abolitionists for resources.

He said Jervis Langdon would give him his last penny.

And he had these relationships with train conductors, baggage handlers, because the train actually ran just a half a block from his house.

- So what would happen is someone from Pennsylvania or Maryland would write to Jones, saying that they had loose horses who were heading his way.

And those loose horses were of course the freedom seekers.

And he would arrange to meet them.

And he would find them housing, clothing, food, forged identity papers if they were intending to stick around for any length of time, maybe find them employment.

If they decided that they wanted to go on, then he would arrange for them to be placed onto the baggage car out on the 4:00 AM train on Northern Central Railroad.

And he was working with the baggage handlers.

And again, we don't know those folks' names.

And they would be put on the train and be sent up to Canada.

(train tooting) - [Narrator] John W. Jones would ultimately be credited with assisting more than 800 individuals on their journey to freedom.

Many would seek refuge in Canada or choose to settle among Elmira's vibrant black community.

Others, however, may have traveled the road just 30 miles north to the village of Ithaca, finding sanctuary among a welcoming community and drawn to one of New York's most important hubs for abolitionist activity and spiritual strength, the St. James AME Zion Church.

(birds chirping) ♪ I've got a crown up in the Kingdom ♪ ♪ Ain't that good news ♪ ♪ I've got a crown up in the Kingdom ♪ ♪ Ain't that good news ♪ ♪ I'm gonna lay down this world ♪ ♪ I'm gonna shoulder up my cross ♪ ♪ I'm gonna take it home to my Jesus ♪ ♪ Ain't that good news ♪ ♪ I've got a robe up in that Kingdom ♪ ♪ Ain't that good news ♪ ♪ I've got a robe in the Kingdom ♪ ♪ Ain't that good news ♪ ♪ I'm gonna lay down this world ♪ - [Narrator] By 1825, the AME Church had established a congregation in Ithaca, led by Peter Webb, who had purchased his freedom from slavery.

In 1836, the St. James AME Zion Church was built on land purchased for $5, money raised by Ithaca's 136 African American residents.

The church quickly became a center of political and social activity and a critical stop on the Underground Railroad.

Among St. James' early leaders was Jermain Wesley Loguen, a man whose life and work not only shaped the enduring legacy of St. James Church, but would also leave an indelible mark on the history of the Underground Railroad itself.

(flowing music) Born Jarm Logue in Tennessee in 1813, his story begins with his mother Cherry, a woman who had once been free, but was kidnapped and forced into slavery by Jarm's father, a white man.

Cherry's resilience and determination, however, would lay the foundation for Jarm's remarkable journey.

At age 21, with his mother's help, Jarm escaped slavery, stealing his enslaver's horse, and traveling the Underground Railroad northward until he reached freedom in Canada.

Once there, he adopted the name Jermain Loguen, taught himself to read, and worked various jobs before studying at the Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, New York.

Driven by a passion for education, he opened schools for black children across New York state becoming Utica's first African American teacher, and a powerful voice for justice and equality.

- It was illegal for an enslaved person to learn to read and write.

In this country, it was illegal.

So that was another great part of Reverend Loguen's mission was to educate.

- [Narrator] In the early 1840s, Loguen taught and preached in Syracuse, in Bath, New York before becoming the minister at St. James in 1845.

But his mission didn't stop there.

He also set out on the road as a traveling preacher for the AME Church, spreading messages of faith, freedom, and empowering communities across the region.

- He, on horseback, would ride from Scranton, Pennsylvania to Ithaca, New York, and stop at all the churches in between, all of the AME Zion churches in between.

At that time, they were everywhere.

- Not only did he serve in many of these churches, black churches in upstate New York, he was openly saying, "I assist fugitive slaves."

He would publish that "Come to me, and I will assist you."

In that sense, he's pretty defiant.

- [Narrator] The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 galvanized Jermain Loguen, strengthening his resolve and solidifying his role as a vigilant leader of the Underground Railroad operating from his home in Syracuse.

- He felt so secure in Syracuse because anti-slavery sentiment was so strong there that he actually published his address in the local newspapers, and stated that fugitive slaves were welcome to come to his home for assistance.

And they did.

- [Narrator] As Loguen's prominence in the abolition community grew, so did the threats to his safety.

In 1859, when the wife of his former enslaver demanded he purchase his freedom, Loguen fiercely refused.

Writing from his home in Syracuse, he declared, "Wretched woman, "be it known to you that I value my freedom, "and I trust my strong and brave friends "in this city and state "will be my rescuers and avengers."

In time, Jermain Wesley Loguen would become known as the king of the Underground Railroad, estimated by some to have provided assistance for as many as 1,500 people find their way to freedom.

(gentle music) Jermain Loguen, Gerrit Smith, and John W. Jones represent just a few of the thousands who played critical roles in the success of the Underground Railroad.

Yet their names and acts of bravery were largely overlooked as the history of the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist movement was excluded from school books and classrooms, leaving generations without the full story of this remarkable chapter in American history.

But in the 21st century, the history of the Underground Railroad has begun to reemerge thanks to the dedicated efforts of historians, educators, and local communities committed to preserving these stories.

Building on their research and writings, communities are bringing this history to life through freedom trails, museums, and historic sites.

These efforts not only honor the past, but also foster a deeper connection among communities through a shared legacy of resilience, collaboration, and the enduring fight for freedom.

- What represents healing?

What represents a coming together?

What represents community?

And I just, I can't think of anything better than civil rights heroes that really represent coming together.

And that's something that I really just want to be a part of the public consciousness, and also to get that connected back to the school with administrators, with teachers, and getting curriculum, this curriculum into the classroom so that you don't have to wait till many years later to learn this.

You can learn this along the way and feel like your community has been a part of history.

- Holistic history should be taught.

Everything when I was growing up was all about slavery and referring to people as slaves.

And when you refer to people as slaves, you remove the humanity piece.

They were mothers, daughters, uncles, dads, children who were enslaved.

And when you can grasp that concept, then you understand that that meant they had feelings, abilities, hopes, desires, and gifts.

If you can connect to those stories, then you can connect to the human.

And if you can connect to the human, then your eyes are opened to a space where you can relate and empathize and understand more about what the Underground Railroad complexities were all about.

(poignant music) - For as long as I can remember, my days were filled with the smell of wood and the sound of saws and mallets echoing in the workshop.

I was held in the wood mill where fine furniture was made with rows of work benches and stacks of timber piled high up against the walls.

I was a carpenter, taught by my father before me.

And... the work was hard.

No better than the fields, or so I was told.

I spent my days crafting furniture for rich white folk, knowing none of it would ever grace my own house.

One day, as I was sanding down a piece of oak, I overheard two woodcutters talking.

They were new to the shop.

Their clothes are still covered in sawdust from the forest.

Their voices were low, but I caught the words that made my heart race.

They talked about the North where people were free, where there were no chains and no overseers watching over you.

We all heard rumors about people helping slaves escape to freedom, but it always seemed like a distant dream, something impossible.

But these men spoke with a certainty I hadn't heard before.

They knew folks who made it, who had actually tasted freedom.

As I listened, a feeling of hope started to grow inside me, like, like a tree taking root.

My breaking point came when (man inhales and exhales) the overseer beat a young boy just for breaking a chisel.

(poignant music continues) The boy's cries echoed throughout the workshop, and something inside me just snapped.

I couldn't take it anymore.

That night, during a hard, hard rainstorm, I slipped out of my quarters.

I'd been collecting bits of information for weeks, whispers about safe houses and kind neighbors.

I knew of a barn not far from the workshop, owned by a man who hated the overseer as much as we did.

I hid there for two days, my heart racing every time a twig snapped outside.

The farmer's wife brought me food and whispered words of encouragement.

From there, I went from hiding place to hiding place, sometimes a barn or empty field.

I looked for little signals like lanterns on posts or tree limbs propped up on a fence in odd ways, always using the North Star as my guide.

It was a cold and snowy night when I finally crossed the border into New York.

The air smelled fresher.

Cleaner somehow.

(man exhales) I was free.

I was the same man, but the air around me was different.

I still work with my hands for a cabin maker in Waverly, building the same kind of furniture I did as a slave, but now I do it as a free man.

Scars on my back remind me of where I was.

But the warmth of the sun on my face tells me where I am now.

And every piece of furniture I make, I carve a tiny star into the wood, a symbol of the stars that guided me to freedom.

And it's a reminder to me of the journey I took and a gesture to the future with the hopes that someday no one will ever have to make that same journey.

(poignant music continues) (poignant music continues) (poignant music fades out) ♪ I heard the angels singing ♪ ♪ One morning soon, one morning soon ♪ ♪ One morning soon ♪ ♪ I heard the angels singing ♪ ♪ They were all in my room ♪ ♪ They were all in my room ♪ ♪ They were all in my room ♪ ♪ I heard the angels singing ♪ ♪ They were all in my room ♪ ♪ All in my room ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ ♪ All in my room ♪ ♪ I heard the angels singing ♪ ♪ One morning soon, one morning soon ♪ ♪ One morning soon ♪ ♪ I heard the angels singing ♪ ♪ They were all in my room ♪ ♪ Uh-Uh ♪ ♪ All in my room ♪ ♪ Sure enough were all in my room ♪ ♪ I heard the angels singing ♪ ♪ And they said sing, angel, sing ♪ ♪ Sing ♪ ♪ Sing, angel, sing ♪ ♪ Sing ♪ ♪ Sing, angel, sing ♪ ♪ I heard the angels singing ♪ ♪ They said sing, angel, sing ♪ ♪ Sing ♪ ♪ Sing, angel, sing ♪ ♪ Sing ♪ ♪ Sing, angel, sing ♪ ♪ I heard the angels singing ♪ - [Announcer] Funding for "North to Freedom" was provided by Tompkins Community Bank, Corning Community Impact and Investment, the Community Foundation for South Central New York, the Community Foundation of Elmira-Corning and the Finger Lakes, the Community Foundation of Tompkins County.

Additional support was provided by, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.