Symposium at N.C. History Center set to explore networking of Underground Railroad

A symposium featuring scholars and special programming will explore the complex network of secret routes and safe houses in the Underground Railroad and the courageous and caring people who helped enslaved people escape bondage.

“Pathways to Freedom: The Underground Railroad” will be presented from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, May 21 in the Cullman Performance Hall at the North Carolina History Center.

Registration for the event is $5 plus tax and includes lunch. Space is limited, so be sure to register early to secure your spot. To register, call 252 639-3524, or purchase your ticket at the North Carolina History Center ticket desk located at 529 S. Front Street.

The Underground Railroad refers to the efforts of enslaved African Americans to escape bondage. Harriet Tubman is known as the most famous “conductor.” The methods and routes varied and included escape by both land and sea. During each subsequent decade while slavery was legal in the United States, efforts to escape increased and became more refined.

Sharon Bryant, Tryon Palace's African American Outreach coordinator, said several symposiums have been planned in an effort to educate the community.

"So far we have presented one on Jonkonnu and another on the United States Colored Troops," Bryant said. "These are African-American stories being told so the community can better understand them."

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Jonkonnu refers to a Christmas holiday tradition where enslaved African-Americans incorporated dress and practices from Africa. The U.S. Colored Troops were all-Black units that fought for the Union in the Civil War.

For more information, contact Sharon Bryant, African American Outreach Coordinator, at 252 639-3592, or sharon.bryant@ncdcr.gov.

The keynote speaker for the Underground Railroad event will be Timothy D. Walker, professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He is a scholar of maritime history, colonial overseas expansion and trans-oceanic slave trading.

Walker's 'Sailing to Freedom' presentation will highlight little-known stories and describe the less-understood maritime side of the Underground Railroad, including the impact of African-Americans’ paid and unpaid waterfront labor.

His talk will reconsider and contextualize how escapes were managed along the East Coast, moving from the Carolinas, Virginia and Maryland to safe harbor in northern cities such as Philadelphia, New York, New Bedford and Boston. This new research expands the understanding of how freedom was achieved by sea and what the journey looked like for many African Americans.

During the program, three panel sessions will be held with two speakers per session. Session 1 titled, “The First Underground Railroad in North America,” will feature songs, coded information and other ways of communicating how to gain freedom and stay safe on the local underground railroad network. It will also highlight how and why the network worked.

Speakers will be Maria Hammack, Barra Postdoctoral Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania; and Leesa Jones, co-founder of the Washington Waterfront Underground Railroad Museum in Washington, North Carolina.

Session 2, “The Second and Last Underground Railroad, 1800-1865,” will feature guest speakers Adrienne Israel, retired professor of African and African American History at Guilford College, where she also served for over a decade as vice president and academic dean; and Cassandra Newby-Alexander, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, professor of history, and emeritus director of the Joseph Jenkins Roberts Center for African Diaspora Studies at Norfolk State University.

Session 3, “Legacies of America’s Underground Railroads” speakers will be Tony Frazier, associate professor at North Carolina Central University and National Humanities Center Fellow for the 2021-2022 academic year; and Bryan Robinson, a historian whose research focuses on identity and culture, education, and power relations and CLIR Fellow of African American Studies in Data Curation at UNC-Greensboro.

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Speakers and panelists delve into what is known and unknown about the Underground Railroad, both nationally and more specifically in eastern North Carolina.

There will also be a film presentation and a performance of Songs of Freedom about the Underground Railroad by the Craven Community College Choir.

“The executive director, staff and planners at Tryon Palace are to be commended for offering the public this full view of this country’s popularly named Underground Railroad.” David C. Dennard, chairman, Tryon Palace African American Advisory Committee, said in a press release.

Reporter Tina Adkins can be reached by email at tina.adkins@newbernsj.com. Please consider supporting local journalism by signing up for a digital subscription.

This article originally appeared on Sun Journal: Underground Railroad is focus for symposium at N.C. History Center