A number of authors have used the Underground Railroad as the focal point of their literary works. Some of the books portray it more realistically than others. There are a lot of myths surrounding this system. For instance, the Underground Railroad was not a railroad. It was a network of secret routes and “safe houses” established primarily in the Northern part of the United States and Canada during the early to mid-19th century. The term “railroad” was used because the railroad was an emerging system of transportation and its supporters used railroad code to communicate in secret language. The Underground Railroad was used by runaway slaves seeking freedom with the help of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause.
Luckily, it is possible to visit some of the Underground Railroad “stations.” If you are ever in Philadelphia, you’ll want to visit the Johnson House, which looks much the same today as it did in 1768. During my book-inspired visit to the Johnson House, I learned that William Still, prominent abolitionist, Father of the Underground Railroad and secretary of the Philadelphia Anti-slavery Society, participated in meetings at the Johnson House. It was also visited by the small, but mighty, Harriet Tubman.
While the Johnson House is an important historical site, the Underground Railroad was not just a network of northerners who made their homes available as hiding places for freedom seekers. It was, as Christopher Densmore of the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College so aptly put it, a network that “cut across regions, across religions and across races.” For information on places you might go to pair up with one of these books and learn more about the Underground Railroad, PBS has a great article here. Perhaps one of these books that feature regions, religions, races and locations of the Underground Railroad may inspire you to visit. This list includes both fiction and non-fiction books.
Fiction Books set around the Underground Railroad
1. Redfield Farm by Judith Redline Coopey
Filled with a Quaker conviction as hard as Pennsylvania limestone that slavery is an abomination to be resisted with any means available, the Redfield brother and sister lie, sneak, masquerade and defy their way past would-be enforcers of the hated Fugitive Slave Law. When Jesse returns from a run with a deadly fever, accompanied by a fugitive, Josiah, who is also sick and close to death, Ann nurses both back to health. But precious time is lost, and Josiah, too weak for winter travel, stays on at Redfield Farm where Ann becomes his teacher, friend and confidant.
2. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, this #1 New York Times bestseller chronicles a young slave’s adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.
The Underground Railroad was the inspiration for my recent visit to the Johnson House in Philadelphia.
3. The Mapmaker’s Children by Sarah McCoy
When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad’s leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings.
Eden, a modern woman desperate to conceive a child with her husband, moves to an old house in the suburbs and discovers a porcelain head hidden in the root cellar—the remains of an Underground Railroad doll with an extraordinary past of secret messages, danger and deliverance.
4. Indigo by Beverly Jenkins
As a child Hester Wyatt escaped slavery, but now the dark skinned beauty is a dedicated member of Michigan’s Underground railroad, offering other runaways a chance at the freedom she has learned to love. When one of her fellow conductors brings her an injured man to hide, Hester doesn’t hesitate even after she is told about the price on his head. The man in question is the great conductor known as the “Black Daniel” a vital member of the north’s Underground railroad network, but Hester finds him so rude and arrogant, she begins to question her vow to hide him. As a member of one of the wealthiest free Black families in New Orleans, Galen has turned his back on the lavish living he is accustomed to in order to provide freedom to those enslaved in the south. However, as he heals he cannot turn his back on Hester Wyatt.
5. The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier
Honor Bright, a modest English Quaker, moves to Ohio in 1850–only to find herself alienated and alone in a strange land. Sick from the moment she leaves England, and fleeing personal disappointment, she is forced by family tragedy to rely on strangers in a harsh, unfamiliar landscape. Honor is drawn into the clandestine activities of the Underground Railroad, a network helping runaway slaves escape to freedom, where she befriends two surprising women who embody the remarkable power of defiance. Eventually she must decide if she too can act on what she believes in, whatever the personal costs.
Nonfiction books featuring the Underground Railroad
1. Underground Railroad by William Still
In the winter of 1852, a group of Philadelphia abolitionists dedicated to assisting runaway slaves in their flight to freedom formed a new assistance group to be part of the Underground Railroad—the General Vigilance Committee. William Still, himself a son of slaves, was named its secretary and executive director. Deeply moved by the stories of the fugitive slaves he helped conduct northward, Still took his committee record-keeping to a higher level. He wrote down, in eloquent narrative form, every detail of their stirring, often heartbreaking histories.
2. Never Caught by Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Kathleen Van Cleve
Adult and Young Readers Editions available: From her childhood, to her time with the Washingtons and living in the slave quarters, to her escape to New Hampshire, the authors share an intimate glimpse into the life of a little-known, but powerful figure in history, and her brave journey as she fled the most powerful couple in the country.
Born into a life of slavery, Ona Judge eventually grew up to be George and Martha Washington’s “favored” dower slave. When she was told that she was going to be given as a wedding gift to Martha Washington’s granddaughter, Ona made the bold and brave decision to flee to the north, where she would be a fugitive
3. Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
The son of a freed slave, Solomon Northup lived the first thirty years of his life as a free man in upstate New York. In the spring of 1841, he was offered a job: a short-term, lucrative engagement as a violinist in a traveling circus. It was a trap. In Washington, DC, Northup was drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years on plantations in Louisiana, enduring backbreaking labor, unimaginable violence, and inhumane treatment at the hands of cruel masters, until a kind stranger helped to win his release. His account of those years is a shocking, unforgettable portrait of America’s most insidious historical institution as told by a man who experienced it firsthand.
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