THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD RECORDS

A powerful new edition of an essential collection

“Still, whose own mother and father were born into slavery, first published these papers in 1872”

Author William Still (edited by Quincy T. Mills) Publisher Penguin Random House Price £14.99 Released Out now

The activists of the Underground Railroad are today celebrated for their courageous resistance against slavery, which saw them help hundreds of men, women and children escape to freedom. Their legacies are preserved in an incredible, more than 800 pages long, archive of papers compiled by the abolitionist, writer, historian – and one of the network’s conductors – William Still, who collected anecdotes, firsthand accounts and letters from both those who escaped and those who assisted them.

Still, whose own mother and father were born into slavery, first published these papers in 1872 as The Underground Railroad Records, and in this new edition, Quincy T. Mills presents a selection of these powerful stories. As Mills comments in his introduction, the scope of Still’s archive requires a compact edition such as this to draw out a sample of the material – approximately two-thirds of it is not included here, but Mills writes that he was driven to include the voices of women and families, which is to be commended.

In Still’s own words, a wide variety of experiences are shared, from tales of enslaved people shipping themselves in boxes, to rescue attempts ending in liberation or further tragedy. The reader learns of families caught in the grief of separation, and those who managed to reunite. These accounts all share an individual resonance that magnifies in their collective grouping to form a vitally important document of the lives of enslaved people, and those of the activists who helped many of them into freedom.