WE ARE VERY GRATEFUL FOR THIS COLLABORATION with the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. With the help of the Journal, this issue presents many historical voices and experiences largely absent from the scholarly discourse on freedom, memory, and democracy. It includes a wide range of informed perspectives on a particular and crucial thread of Illinois history that we think has particular relevance in 2024: freedom seekers and abolitionism.
As we speak of freedom seekers, we thank the community of historians who have shifted our thinking away from the old proslavery term “runaway.” This new term restores agency and humanity to those actively seeking to be free from enslavement. Freedom seeking is at the core of this issue, and it has a long tradition in our history and the present day.
Historians who focus more on local and regional histories are closer to the ground, and this is where many community and citizen historians work. As two academics, we have always found knowledge production in the community as well on the campus. This is true across the disciplines, but especially in history, and especially now, with digital methods enabling new data, documents, and discoveries to be found, learned from, and shared. This issue demonstrates that reach.
Moreover, the historical moment we are concerned with is drawing new attention across society. Some say we are moving toward a new Civil War. Certainly, the freedom impulse that broke out when video recorded police killings prompted days of street actions has increased engagement in all kinds of freedom movements. But we also see histories and stories involving African-descended people removed from classrooms and libraries. A debate is breaking out on American history, especially about how to describe and explain the African American experience. This special issue of the Journal demonstrates the need and the value of placing African American freedom narratives at the center of the national narrative.
We are also grateful for the speakers and the audience that made this issue possible. A conference identifies the people who are the most interested and active on a topic and sets them talking to each other. A conference proceedings then puts in print the ideas and experiences of many people who would not otherwise see their history work thus recorded, but who came together with a purpose. The proceedings of the Illinois meetings of the nineteenth-century Colored Conventions Movement are a high standard to be emulated.1
This issue demonstrates the importance of a collaboration between professional academic historians and local historians, activists, and even historical actors who live and work in the contexts being studied. This issue includes just such a diverse set of participants. It is a model of democratic knowledge production.
We also acknowledge Illinois College as the perfect venue for and an enthusiastic host of this event. Both the college president and the provost offered extended and thoughtful comments. Two students read original poetry. And the engine for the hosting was the college's new African American Studies program. We applaud Illinois College for examining and celebrating its history with abolitionism, reflecting on the decades since then, and offering its diversifying student body a more complete educational experience.
So why did all these parties convene at Illinois College in February 2024?
About a year earlier, central Illinois gained a national park. The New Philadelphia National Historic Site, as it is formally known, is a remarkable place for freedom seeking. From 1817 to 1854, Frank McWorter purchased the freedom of sixteen family members, starting with his wife, Lucy. In 1837 Frank he became the first African American to register and plat a town in the United States—New Philadelphia. Frank and Lucy led what soon became an abolitionist community, an integrated town, and eventually a landmark for locals, who always remembered the story. It was they and the descendants of Frank and Lucy who pushed for at least four decades to win national recognition for New Philadelphia.
The New Philadelphia Association (NPA) formed in the wake of extending Interstate 72 west from Springfield. Leaders from the highway committee recruited several other history-minded locals and established the association to attend to the townsite and its associated cemetery. Back in 1996, they decided to push for greater recognition, and soon focused on national recognition. They recruited archaeologists who then spent a decade, with National Science Foundation and other funding, with students, carrying out digs in New Philadelphia, analyzing the remarkable finds, and working with the NPA on promotion.2 The NPA also created visitor experiences and held annual events. They pointed out that between the two antislavery figures of Mark Twain (Hannibal) and Abraham Lincoln (Springfield) is a third: Frank McWorter. They pointed to the tiny town (peak population 160, 30 percent African American) and said, “If New Philadelphia was possible, then maybe America is possible.”
Then, in 2022, when the national park became official, the story of New Philadelphia was no longer local. The site began to draw unprecedented national attention. The flow of visitors grew. For the story of New Philadelphia goes beyond Pike County, Illinois, and tells a broader story of the freedom-seeking tradition.
But how to ensure that all boats are lifted by this recognition? Cultural heritage, community and economic development, all work best in partnership. Numerous sites along Interstate 72 and nearby were already telling stories of freedom seeking. New historical connections between these sites were even emerging.
The Underground Railroad was not only a network of safe houses. It was people on a journey and those who helped them. The lead protagonists—most of whom did not leave a trace—were the African Americans escaping enslavement. They did so unaided. They did so with help from many kinds of people. Among these helpers were European Americans and Native Americans (themselves displaced and embattled) as well as African Americans. And all this was illegal, part of a national struggle over slavery and freedom. So the Underground Railroad was part of a freedom movement, in two senses. First, the movement of people out of the slave states. Second, a social or political movement to impact the direction of the nation.
The new national park is a moment to rally all the nearby African American projects to remember and tell these stories—and then to recruit every other history-minded institution to join in. Gerald McWorter, Frank and Lucy's great-great-grandson, reached out to nearby African Americans doing history work: G. Faye Dant at Jim's Journey: The Huck Finn Freedom Center in Hannibal; Carolyn Farrar and Nalo Mitchell at the Springfield and Central Illinois African American History Museum; Kamau Kemayó at the University of Illinois Springfield; Brian Mitchell at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield; Alberta Robinson and Art Wilson at the Jacksonville African American History Museum, and Brittney Yancy at Illinois College. Kate Williams-McWorter also joined the organizing committee. These people and sites were at work along the Interstate-72 corridor from Springfield to Hannibal, Missouri; thus the Freedom Corridor.
This committee in turn mobilized even more regional history and heritage professionals and organizations in order to launch a modern day Freedom Corridor. This began with the two-day event on February 1–2, 2024. Illinois College in Jacksonville was a natural choice for venue. And now this event is presented here in this issue of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, with each speaker's talk across several panels and sessions edited into several articles.3
The event was incorporated into the Illinois College curriculum and the students who attended offered many written comments. Here is a small sample:
Earl Pursley's remarks were the most compelling, because he discusses many African American people who had a major impact on history in Pittsfield. For example, Lizzie Merritt graduated from Pittsfield High School in 1908 and later on became a teacher. The main goal or priority of the community museum in Pittsfield is to “bring the story back to life.” By “story” he is referring to specific points in history.
The Freedom Corridor conference offered a captivating exploration of the historical tapestry and community endeavors in central Illinois and northeastern Missouri. For me, the director of the Hannibal museum [G. Faye Dant] stood out with compelling remarks that resonated on a personal level. What gripped my attention were the director's priorities, notably their emphasis on community engagement. The vision extended beyond traditional preservation, focusing on transforming the museum into a vibrant space for cultural dialogue, . . . an active participant in the community's narrative. This prioritization of community involvement showcased the director's dedication to not only conserving history but ensuring its living relevance for the present community.
Nalo Mitchell, the first speaker, had the most compelling remarks, for me. Being the current museum director at the African American History Museum in Springfield, her priorities for the museum are to tell authentic stories of African American life in Springfield and central Illinois while preserving and celebrating the culture. This particularly resonated with me because I took Dr. Yancy's African American history course two semesters ago, where we learned about the importance of African American history and cultural preservation. I actively felt myself drawing connections from Dr. Yancy's class. Ms. Mitchell believes it is her and her people's duty to be a “beacon of light in the community,” which made me smile.
Art [Wilson] and the museum here in Jacksonville really touched me because the history he is talking about is here where we go to school and live our lives. I had no idea that we still had so many standing sights that were a part of the Underground Railroad. The thing that really stood out to me was that professors at Illinois College helped slaves during those times, which I never knew, and it makes me more proud to go to this college.
The Freedom Corridor has continued with monthly and, in June 2024, weekly talks with local and national historians of slavery and freedom. A second conference is planned for March 28–29, 2025, again at Illinois College. The first conference is entirely viewable online, at http://publish.illinois.edu/freedomcorridor.
As readers of this journal well know, the past and the future are linked. This was and is the guiding concept for the Corridor. At a highly polarized moment such as ours, we can go back and get wisdom from the past. We can talk it over. Please join us in these pages and at our events.
Notes
“Illinois State Conventions,” Colored Conventions Project Digital Records, accessed August 11, 2024, https://omeka.coloredconventions.org/state-conventions#Illinois.
Among the many books, chapters, articles, and theses published by scholars and students out of this work, we point readers to Christopher C. Fennell, Broken Chains and Subverted Plans: Ethnicity, Race, and Commodities (University Press of Florida, 2017), which should be read alongside the student paper in this issue to understand the railroad routing.
Marynel Corton of the Barry (Illinois) Museum opted for her remarks not to appear in print; they can be found in the video archive at http://publish.illinois.edu/freedomcorridor.
