Harriet Tubman was not the only runaway who journeyed back to the slave perilous South to free more enslaved Africans. For many free Blacks, the spirit of revolution and ubuntu continued to course through their veins as freedom did not feel whole without the others. The Underground Railroad was a product of ubuntu revolution, a collection of interconnected stops that collaborated with, supported, and defended runaway Africans on their journey from the south into states were slavery was illegal. What was freedom for, if not to assist in freeing others?
Though Harriet Tubman is a well known figure associated with the Underground Railroad, women are often underrepresented in the collective Black liberation movement but there were many women who risked their lives on the front lines. Polly Jackson was one of those women and cleverly used her gender to aid in her mission to free enslaved people. As an escaped slave herself, she later settled in the community of Africa, Ohio and worked as an agent on the Underground Railroad helping others escape. She would sit in her wicker chair under the guise of a timid older woman when officers passed by her home them and would wait for nightfall to attack. Polly was known for fighting off slave catchers with a butchers knife and a kettle of boiling water.
Unlike Polly, William Still was a free born Black man from Wilmington. Still assisted on the last stop of the Underground Railroad in Delaware from his office near Philadelphia. He chaired the Vigilance Committee of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society that gave out food, clothes and funding to runaways while collaborating with them in order to coordinate escapes. The Pennsylvania Abolition Society was a one stop shop for fugitives. Along with helping hundreds of runaways, he captured their experiences to share with others in a self published book, The Underground Railroad by William Still, in 1856. The book recorded former slaves personal experiences as well as insight as to how the Underground Railroad operated. Still met many people through his work, but one stood out from the many when his long lost brother arrived at his doorstep for assistance after spending decades enslaved in the Deep South. Their reunion like many long lost family members found in freedom was life changing. Like Still and his bother, many Blacks were separated from their families, boys at the age of puberty were often sold to the deep south for brutal outdoor hard labor positions.
Samuel Burris was another free Black man that worked as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Though born in Delaware, as a child his family moved to Philadelphia in order to live in a free state. His position on the Railroad led into Maryland from which he regularly traveled to the South to lead runaways there and into Delaware. While there was great risk for runaways, even free Blacks were at risks of being arrested and forced into slavery as a result of collaboration with fugitives. During his journeys, Burris was arrested and put in jail for many months before he was convicted and ordered to servitude for seven years. Members of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society led by an abolitionist named Isaac Flint raised the money in order to purchase Burris at the auction where he was scheduled to be sold. Burris recounts in his diary entry, “The auctioneer began and soon had a bid of five hundred dollars. A Baltimore trader was now in the lead, when Flint, if we mistake not, bought off the trader for one hundred dollars. The bids were suddenly checked, and Burris was knocked down to Isaac S. Flint”. Because of his diligent and fearless work with the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society Burris was successfully purchased back from slavery.
‘Mother’ Priscilla Baltimore was another one of the radically powerful female conductors. She was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, in 1801 to a white slave owner and her enslaved mother. Her father sold her to another plantation when she was only 10 years old. She was later purchased by a Methodist missionary who allowed her to buy her freedom after seven years. After purchasing her own freedom she tracked down her father and purchased her mother’s freedom as well. After liberating her mother, Priscilla’s thirst for freeing others continued. She later led 11 enslaved African families from the slave state of Missouri to Illinois, where slavery was illegal. Priscilla moved to Brooklyn to and founded a freedom village which she described as, “a community where the residents could determine their own destiny” a privilege that many Blacks still seek to have today. Priscilla’s village in Brooklyn is one of the earliest free Black settlements in the country that continues to thrive today.
None of these freedom fighters are names that we hear regularly during Black History Month or in our grade school civil rights studies but this does not make their stories any less relevant to the abolitionist movement. The lack of circulation of these stories actually indicates their relevance. The stories that we hear about our history are often watered down representations of what freedom fighting looks like from the angle of White Supremacy. There’s no way to blanket White Supremacy over the life of a knife slinging, boiling water throwing radical like Polly. These are some of the brave people responsible for the freedom of those ancestors that came before us whose names we many never know.
