This enlightening study employs the tools of archaeology to uncover a new historical perspective on the Underground Railroad. Unlike previous histories of the Underground Railroad, which have focused on frightened fugitive slaves and their benevolent abolitionist accomplices, Cheryl LaRoche focuses instead on free African American communities, the crucial help they provided to individuals fleeing slavery, and the terrain where those flights to freedom occurred. This study foregrounds several small, rural hamlets on the treacherous southern edge of the free North in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. LaRoche demonstrates how landscape features such as waterways, iron forges, and caves played a key role in the conduct and effectiveness of the Underground Railroad. Rich in oral histories, maps, memoirs, and archaeological investigations, this examination of the "geography of resistance" tells the new powerful and inspiring story of African Americans ensuring their own liberation in the midst of oppression.
| Cover Title Page Contents List of Figures Preface Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Free Black Communities 1. Rocky Fork, Illinois: Oral Tradition as Memory 2. Miller Grove, Illinois: Linking a Free Black Community to the Underground Railroad 3. Lick Creek, Indiana: A Quaker Connection 4. Poke Patch, Ohio: A Different Route Part II: Geographies of Resistance 5. The Geography of Resistance 6. Rethinking African American Migration Part III: Family, Faith, and Fraternity 7. Family, Church, Community: Pillars of the Black Underground Railroad Movement 8. Faith and Fraternity 9. Destination Freedom Appendix Notes Bibliography Index | "In this book Cheryl Janifer LaRoche provides a corrective to this gap in the history by taking a broader landscape approach to 'geographies of resistance,' and she also traces in understated terms but powerful examples the silencing of the same history."—The Journal of American History

"LaRoche deserves praise for her effort to situate free blacks firmly at the center of the scholarship on the Underground Railroad. She also makes contribution to that body of literature."—Civil War Book Review


"This important addition to the scholarship on the Underground Railroad focuses on the role of free black communities. . . . Utilizing archaeology, previously untapped written sources, and oral history, the author makes a convincing argument for including black communities in the narrative about the Underground Railroad. Highly recommended."—Choice
| Cheryl LaRoche is a lecturer in American studies at the University of Maryland.