Talks@EHC: "Onward to Chicago: Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Northeastern Illinois"

Decades before the Civil War, Illinois’s status as a free state beckoned enslaved people, particularly those in Kentucky and Missouri, to cross porous river borders and travel toward new lives. While traditional histories of the Underground Railroad in Illinois start in 1839, and focus largely on the romanticized tales of white men, Larry A. McClellan reframes the story, only only introducing readers to earlier freedom seekers, but also illustrating that those who bravely aided them were Black and White, men and women. McClellan features dozens of individuals who made dangerous journeys to reach freedom as well as residents in Chicago Chicago and across northeastern Illinois who made a deliberate choice to break the law to help. In September, McClellan received the Underground Railroad Free Press 2023 Memorial Prize for the Advancement of Knowledge for his work and his new book, calling it “the finest book yet … for a close-up look at the Underground Railroad as it actually happened.”

Dr. Larry 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 America. In 1970, he helped to start Governors State University and taught there for many years. He is now an Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Community Studies at GSU.