#252 The Underground Railroad: Escape through New York

For thousands of African-American enslaved people -- escaping the bonds of slavery in the South -- the journey to freedom wound its way through New York via the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a loose, clandestine network of homes, businesses and churches, operated by freed black people and white abolitionists who put it upon themselves -- often at great risk -- to hide fugitives on the run. New York and Brooklyn were vital hubs in this network but these cities were hardly safe havens. The streets swarmed with bounty hunters, and a growing number of New Yorkers, enriched by Southern businesses, were sympathetic to the institution of slavery. Not even freed black New Yorkers were safe from kidnapping and racist anti-abolitionist mobs. In this podcast we present some of the stops in New York along the Underground Railroad -- from offices off Newspaper Row to the basement of New York's first African-American owned bookstore. You'll be familiar with some of this story's leading figures like Frederick Douglass , Harriet Tubman and Henry Ward Beecher . But many of these courageous tales come from people who you may not know -- the indefatigable Louis Napoleon , the resolute Sydney Howard Gay , the defiant David Ruggles and James Hamlet, the first victim of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. PLUS : A trip to Brooklyn Heights and the site of New York's most famous Underground Railroad site -- Plymouth Church. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.