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Gateway to Freedom

The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad

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Gateway to Freedom

Written by: Eric Foner
Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
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About this listen

The dramatic story of fugitive slaves and the antislavery activists who defied the law to help them reach freedom. They are little known to history: Sydney Howard Gay, an abolitionist newspaper editor; Louis Napoleon, a furniture polisher; Charles B. Ray, a black minister. At great risk they operated the Underground Railroad in New York, a city whose businesses, banks, and politics were deeply enmeshed in the slave economy.

In secret coordination with black dockworkers who alerted them to the arrival of fugitives and with counterparts in Norfolk, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Albany, and Syracuse, underground-railroad operatives in New York helped more than 3,000 fugitive slaves reach freedom between 1830 and 1860. Their defiance of the notorious Fugitive Slave Law inflamed the South. White and black, educated and illiterate, they were heroic figures in the ongoing struggle between slavery and freedom. Making brilliant use of fresh evidence - including the meticulous record of slave rescues secretly kept by Gay - Eric Foner elevates the underground railroad from folklore to sweeping history.

©2015 Original material published by arrangement with W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. (P)2015 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books Americas Black & African American United States

Critic Reviews

"A masterwork [by] the preeminent historian of the Civil War era." ( Boston Globe)

"JD Jackson offers a solid, easy-on-the-ears narration of this reexamination of the Underground Railroad." (AudioFile)
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