Taking the Kids: How to explore the Underground Railroad
Explore the sites along Harriet Tubman Byway on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and through Delaware with a free map or audio guide. Highlights include the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park and Visitor Center, the Harriet Tubman Memorial Garden, The Harriet Tubman Museum & Educational Center. There will be special events commemorating the bicentennial of her birth.
Watch the award-winning “The Underground Railroad” fantastical miniseries based on the 2016 novel by Colson Whitehead. In the novel and the series, there is an actual railroad, engineers, conductors and tunnels through which Cora and Caesar escape slavery from Georgia as slave catchers chase them.
In reality, the National Park Service's Network to Freedom program consists of nearly 700 sites in 39 states plus Washington, D.C., and the US Virgin Islands. Twice per year, the NPS reviews and accepts applications from sites, facilities, and programs with verified connections to the Underground Railroad. Eighteen sites were recently added, including Graceland Cemetery in Illinois where 28 Underground Railroad activists are buried to forts, homes, and farms.
There are also many virtual opportunities at these sites. For example, there is a Virtual Black Heritage Trail Tour along the heart of Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood that showcases buildings and homes of the free Black community of the 19th century that housed freedom seekers. The final stops — the Abiel Smith School and the African Meeting House — are part of the Museum of African American History, which is open to the public.
Remind the kids that Harriet Tubman never learned to read or write but she became one of the most respected and revered women in American history.
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(For more Taking the Kids, visit www.takingthekids.com and also follow TakingTheKids on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram where Eileen Ogintz welcomes your questions and comments. The Kid’s Guide to Philadelphia, the 13th in the kid’s guide series, was published in 2020, with The Kid’s Guide to Camping coming in 2021.)
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