Underground Railroad Research Paper

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Jacky Robinson, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King Jr are all names we know and revere. They are celebrated for their courage to stand against oppression, famous for fighting for what they believe in, equality. However, there were several people who did the same thing decades before them, they risked punishment, enslavement, and even death. The Underground Railroad was a network that spread all over the country and it undermined a society that said owning other human beings was okay. When studying the history of the Underground Railroad there may only be one or two names that are honored, yet there were dozens of unsung heroes who risked everything to ensure the survival of slaves throughout the South. The 1800s were a time of change in the…show more content…
Even though he himself was never a slave his father and mother were both ex-slaves. His father bought his freedom and his mother escaped her master, as a result William was raised with great respect for the struggles of the slaves to the South. He worked his way up from a janitor to one of the most important members of the Pennsylvania’s Anti-Slavery Society, he became the chief conductor of the Pennsylvania’s Underground Railroad. What may be his most important contribution to the Railroad was the detailed notes he kept on the people he helped. Any slave he came across he would write down the story of how they escaped by means of the Underground Railroad. It was a dangerous time and had his notes been discovered not only would he have been killed, but everybody he helped could have been found and enslaved again. However in 1872, The Underground Rail Road was published giving America an accurate retelling of the struggles slaves had to endure to be free. William still wrote in the preface of the 1878 edition “The pulse of the four million slaves and their desire for freedom, were better felt through “The Underground Railroad,” than through any other channel.” (Still) Slaves had been striving for freedom for hundreds of years, but it had never gained the attention of the country the way it did in those few decades with the Underground Railroad. People were paying attention for what seemed like the first time to the struggles of slaves, and Mr. Still’s book only expanded on that. (The Underground Railroad: Authentic Narratives and First-hand
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