Conference: Michigan's Underground Railroad Network

The African and African American Studies program in collaboration with the Michigan Freedom Trail Commission, the Hauenstein Presidential Studies Center and the Johnson Philanthropy Center will host a conference at Grand Valley on September 26-27, 2008 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the National Network to Freedom and the Michigan Freedom Trail. The theme of the conference will be 'Michigan's Underground Railroad Network: A Decade of Discoveries.'

The keynote speakers will be Karolyn Smardz Frost, Toronto archaeologist and author of I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad, Betty DeRamus, Detroit author of Forbidden Fruit Love Stories of the Underground Railroad, Anna-Lisa Cox, author of A Stronger Kinship One Town’s Extraordinary Story of Hope and Faith, and Allen Guelzo, Lincoln scholar and professor at Gettysburg College and others.

The National Network to Freedom and the Michigan Freedom Trail were created by national and Michigan legislation to enable citizens to recover, document, preserve and commemorate the histories of the underground railroad networks devised by black and white Americans that enabled blacks to resist and escape from slavery. The work that citizens have done to recover our state’s stories will be highlighted in the conference. In the past decade the work of citizens throughout the nation has dramatically increased our understanding of the Underground Railroad and abolitionist movements.

Details of the conference are posted and updated on the conference website.