What You Didn't Know About the Underground Railroad: An Evening with Historian Alicestyne Turley
February 16, 6-7:30 p.m.
Mercantile Library
414 Walnut Street
Cincinnati, Ohio
This Six@Six Lecture is sponsored by Northern Kentucky University's Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement in collaboration with community partners. Free and open to the public.
You can attend this talk in-person or virtually. Designate your preference when you RSVP.
RSVP online here: https://nku.eventsair.com/sixatsix/tickets/Site/Register
Alicestyne Turley will discuss her new book, The Gospel of Freedom: Black Evangelicals and the Underground Railroad, recently published by the University Press of Kentucky. Dr. Turley is the director of the Freedom Stories Project with the International Storytelling Project (https://www.storytellingcenter.net/freedomstories/). According to the University Press of Kentucky webpage, Alicestyne Turley positions Kentucky as a crucial "pass through" territory for escaping slaves and addresses the important contributions of white and black antislavery southerners who united to form organized networks to assist slaves in the Deep South. Drawing on family history and lore as well as a large range of primary sources, Turley shows how free and enslaved African Americans directly influenced efforts to physically and spiritually resist slavery, and how slaves developed their own systems to help others who were enslaved below the Mason-Dixon Line. Wilbur H. Siebert's study of the Underground Railroad in 1898 was based on the accounts of northern white male abolitionists, leaving out the central role of black anti-slavery activists. Illuminating the roles of black freedom fighters, Turley questions the validity of long-held conclusions based on Siebert's original work and suggests new areas of inquiry for further exploration. The Gospel of Freedom seeks to fill the historical gaps and promote the lost voices of the Underground Railroad.
0 Replies