About The Underground Railroad Hub
This site provides links to underground railroad projects that focus on Ithaca, Tompkins County, and central and western New York.
The projects featured on this website explore our history while simultaneously creating communities of researchers of all ages and backgrounds.
Funding for this landing page came from a New Frontier Grant (2021) administered by Cornell University’s College of Arts & Sciences.
Why did we do it?
Because of past and growing interest in the history of the underground railroad in our region, these projects have multiplied since 2020 and now require a hub for collecting and sharing information about our endeavors to learn more about this area of American history.
These projects were either spearheaded by or developed in partnership with Gerard Aching, now retired professor of Africana and Romance Studies at Cornell University.
As a contributor to or convener of these underground railroad projects, Gerard Aching brings over two decades of university research and teaching experience on slavery, colonialism, and literature from the Spanish, French, and English-speaking Caribbean to these public humanities projects in central New York. His most comprehensive publication on slavery in the Caribbean is Freedom from Liberation: Slavery, Sentiment, and Literature in Cuba (Indiana, 2015), in which he analyzes Juan Francisco Manzano’s Autobiography of a Slave (1840), the only 19th-century slave narrative to have emerged thus far in the Spanish-speaking world. He is currently at work on a book-length project on the underground railroad, tentatively titled, “The Promise of Rebirth: A Contemporary Reflection on the Underground Railroad.
Retired Cornell University professor Gerard Aching examines the Underground Railroad’s history, highlighting its role as a freedom route for enslaved African Americans and its importance in understanding America’s legacy of forced migration. Video courtesy of WSKG Public Media and Cornell University’s Migrations Grand Challenge.
Our website cover image portrays an African American woman contemplating a rural landscape at dusk. Photo by Chris Kitchen. Model: Nicole LaFave.
Centralize and disseminate.
To achieve these goals of centralization and dissemination of local information about the underground railroad, this hub fulfills two functions.
First, as a portal to concurrent project activities, it emulates the historical centralizing role of Ithaca’s underground railroad station, the St. James AME Zion church, as its leadership and congregation gathered intelligence and made practical decisions about how to assist freedom seekers who traveled through or settled in our region.
Second, the hub acknowledges and foregrounds the exciting ways in which collectively researching and learning about the underground railroad, regardless of one’s background, creates communities.
Do you have a story to share?
Experience has shown us that many individuals from our central and western New York possess knowledge of underground railroad safe houses, hiding places, and activities. Feel free to share these accounts with us.