- During the nineteenth century (1800s) many African slaves from the United States ran to Canada and Mexico.
- Approximately 50,000 men, women and children ran away each year but only a few thousand made it to freedom.
- For most escaped slaves the goal was permanent freedom.
- Slavery was a system that brutalized and exploited the Africans and their descendants that ended up living on plantations in the US.
- The run for freedom often meant leaving loved ones behind in slavery.
- Slaves who were caught were returned to bondage - even when they got away, runaways did not have any right to freedom. The law protected the rights of slaveholders to retrieve their "property."
- Most runaways were young men in their teens and twenties because they had not yet married or had not yet begun a family.
- Women had often begun to raise families by their late teens and early twenties which made it harder to get away or evade capture. Still, many women embarked on the migration to freedom.
- Runaways showed great strength of character - courage, ingenuity and organizational skills.
- They had to change their appearance - clothing, hair, and sometimes even gender.
- Most runaways chose one of the five places to run to: towns and cities in the South, remote areas near the plantations, the West, the Northern US, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and Canada.
- In 1772, England declared that any slave reaching Canadian soil was automatically free so after the War of 1812 many runaways started to settle in Canada. People began to call it the "Promised Land."
- Over the next thirty years, between one and two thousand African Americans entered Canada each year.
- By the start of the American Civil War which ended slavery in the US about thirty thousand fugitives lived in Canada.
From Runaway Journeys
SYMBOLS OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
Those helping the runaways used symbols to show them the safest way to run. Some of the symbols could be found in the patterns in quilts. Each of the quilt patterns gave a different message to the runaways.
Another way that runaways were given messages was through songs - specifically "spirituals" as the slave songs came to be known.
Today, you can choose one of two tasks:
- Create a (paper) quilt that gives a secret message. Write a description of what message you are trying to pass along to the runaways.
- Create a music poster with the lyrics of one of the songs. Illustrate the poster with pictures that show what message the song is giving the runaways.
Go to this link and follow the journey of the Underground Railroad:






