Vigilance
The Life of William Still, Father of the Underground Railroad
-
- $7.99
Publisher Description
The remarkable and inspiring story of William Still, an unknown abolitionist who dedicated his life to managing a critical section of the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia—the free state directly north of the Mason-Dixon Line—helping hundreds of people escape from slavery.
Born free in 1821 to two parents who had been enslaved, William Still was drawn to antislavery work from a young age. Hired as a clerk at the Anti-Slavery office in Philadelphia after teaching himself to read and write, he began directly assisting enslaved people who were crossing over from the South into freedom. Andrew Diemer captures the full range and accomplishments of Still’s life, from his resistance to Fugitive Slave Laws and his relationship with John Brown before the war, to his long career fighting for citizenship rights and desegregation until the early twentieth century.
Despite Still’s disappearance from history books, during his lifetime he was known as “the Father of the Underground Railroad.” Working alongside Harriet Tubman and others at the center of the struggle for Black freedom, Still helped to lay the groundwork for long-lasting activism in the Black community, insisting that the success of their efforts lay not in the work of a few charismatic leaders, but in the cultivation of extensive grassroots networks. Through meticulous research and engaging writing, Vigilance establishes William Still in his rightful place in American history as a major figure of the abolitionist movement.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this well-researched and vividly written biography, Towson University historian Diemer (The Politics of Black Citizenship) spotlights the crucial contributions of William Still (1821–1902) to the abolitionist movement. A leader of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, Still helped turn Philadelphia into a crucial juncture of the Underground Railroad, though his contributions have been overshadowed by other conductors, including Harriet Tubman. Still was motivated, according to Diemer, by his own mother's flight from slavery in Maryland, and in the meticulous records he kept of the Underground Railroad, Still highlighted the bravery of enslaved men and women who attempted escape. Diemer also delves into Still's ideology of Black self-sufficiency and tracks his journey to becoming a prosperous coal merchant and one of Philadelphia's wealthiest Black men. Also recounted are Henry "Box" Brown's 1849 escape from a Virginia plantation by mailing himself in a crate to Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society office; the 1851 Christiana riot, in which a free Black community refused to surrender four fugitives to a slaveholder's posse; and other watershed events. This immersive history sheds valuable light not just on Still, but on the communal workings of the abolitionist movement. Illus.
