Presentation Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Chicago and Northeastern Illinois

Location: Beverly Unitarian Church, 10244 S. Longwood Drive Chicago
Time: Saturday November 18th at 7 p.m.

A program “Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Chicago and Northeastern Illinois” at 7 p.m. Nov. 18, is sponsored by Southsiders for Peace and the church’s Social Justice Committee. Author Larry McClellan will present the program, accompanied by Tom Shepherd of the Little Calumet River Underground Railroad Project. The program explores the movement of people escaping slavery, known as “freedom seekers,” and the network of support that developed as the Underground Railroad. In the decades before the Civil War, several thousand freedom seekers traveled through northeastern Illinois on their way to freedom points farther north. Their stories, and the range of encounters with white and Black abolitionists who provided them with assistance, will be shared.

McClellan has written extensively on the Underground Railroad in Illinois and northwest Indiana. He was the principal author of applications that added sites in Crete, Lockport and on the Little Calumet River to the National Park Service registry of significant Underground Railroad sites in the United States. He is the author of three books: “Onward to Chicago: Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Northeastern Illinois,” to be released this summer; “The Underground Railroad South of Chicago”; and “To the River: The Remarkable Journey of Caroline Quarlls, a Freedom Seeker on the Underground Railroad.”

Shepherd is a preservation, environmental, and social activist in the south Chicago region from the Pullman community. He was president of the Southeast Environmental Task Force for 15 years.

-No cost entry with free-will offering accepted-
Information: 773-233-7080.