The Underground Railroad

Nearly fifty years after his mother fled slavery, a man arrived in Philadelphia searching for his parents—and William Still discovered he was his long-lost brother.

In the years before emancipation, Philadelphia’s Anti-Slavery Office was a place where people seeking freedom and those who aided them crossed paths. Still’s own family knew the cost of escape: his mother fled with her children, was captured and forced back into bondage, then escaped again, leaving two sons behind. As an abolitionist and Underground Railroad organizer, Still preserved the testimonies, letters, and recollections of fugitives and their helpers—accounts of ingenuity, danger, and families torn apart. What could those who risked everything for freedom endure, and what might their stories reveal?

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