Uncovering and Recentering the Maritime Underground Railroad, Presentation & Booksigning with Timothy Walker

Underground Railroad scholarship has focused almost exclusively on interior overland routes used to escape enslavement in the Antebellum South. Largely overlooked, however, is the great multitude of enslaved persons who made their way to freedom aboard merchant vessels plying coastal routes along the Atlantic seaboard. This crucial but neglected aspect of the Underground Railroad story is the focus of this talk — and a groundbreaking volume of essays edited by Timothy Walker. Exhibit courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.