Author: Eric Foner
Title: Gateway to Freedom
Narrator: J.D. Jackson
Publication Info: HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books (2015)
Other books read by the same author: The Fiery Trial
Summary/Review:
The Underground Railroad was the metaphorical name for the system of routes and safe houses that enslaved Black Americans used to escape slavery and find some modicum of safety in free states of the North and in Canada. I expected the book would primarily detail the journeys of people using the Underground Railroad, but that was not the case. Instead it focused on the work of abolitionists, both free Black and white, who organized the Underground Railroad, as well as the work of Black people who emancipated themselves and then worked to help others.
It focuses specifically on activity in New York City, so some of the most famous abolitionists, like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, are only mentioned tangentially where their stories intersect with the city. This history of the Underground Railroad is particularly focused on how abolitionism, antislavery, and freeing the enslaved was affected by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The book is an interesting prism on how many different people – often ordinary and uncelebrated – worked to help free thousands of people from the bonds of slavery from the 1830s to 1860s.
Recommended books:
- Never caught : the Washingtons’ relentless pursuit of their runaway slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
- Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston
- North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 by Leon F. Litwack
Rating: ***1/2
