The Underground Railroad was a massive secret network of individuals—abolitionists, free blacks, fugitive slaves, whites, Native Americans—who were dedicated to helping slaves escape from the South before and during the Civil War.

Though never formally organized, tens of thousands of slaves, aided by more than 3,200 railroad “workers,” escaped to northern states and to Canada, Texas, Mexico and through Florida to the Caribbean. The leaders of the railroad, called “conductors,” led slaves to freedom from many directions and religious denominations played important roles in helping slaves escape.

According to Denise Dallmer of Northern Kentucky University, the importance of the Underground Railroad movement is that it was the first civil rights movement and represents a multiracial effort to achieve freedom.

In an article on the Web site www.historycooperative.org, she called the railroad a liberation movement with black and whites who were courageous, brave, determined and creative in a common goal: helping slaves gain freedom. The History Cooperative is a resource site for historians.

According to Alicestyne Turley-Adams, director of the Underground Railroad Research Institute, it is not clear when slave escapes came to be thought of as an “underground railroad” but the term was clearly entrenched by the 1830s, when the popularity of trains was combined with slave runaways.

The institute, housed in the former slave quarters of John A. Sullivan at Georgetown (Ky.) College fosters research on African-American resistance to slavery and racism and seeks to broaden public understanding of this aspect of American history. Its purpose is to study the historical and cultural context of the system in Kentucky and Ohio.

In a brochure Turley-Adams designed for the launch of the United Methodist historically black college and universities endowment campaign, she wrote that one story of the Underground Railroad’s origin occurred when a slave named Tice Davids fled Kentucky in 1831 and “probably” was hidden by a Presbyterian minister in Ripley, Ohio.

Davids was chased by his owner in a rowboat as he swam across the Ohio River “where he disappeared without a trace, leaving the bewildered slaveholder to wonder if Davids had somehow ‘gone off on some underground road.’” She wrote that the story of Davids’ escape spread among slaves throughout the South “fueling myths and hopes of escape via an ‘underground railroad.’”

*Green is a United Methodist News Service news writer in Nashville, Tenn.

News media contact: Linda Green, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.