Through Darkness to Light

About this book

"They left in the middle of the night-- often carrying little more than the knowledge to follow the North Star. An estimated one hundred thousand slaves between 1830 and the end of the Civil War in 1865 embarked on a journey of untold hardship in search of freedom, many with the aid of the Underground Railroad. Through Darkness to Light : Seeking Freedom on the Underground Railroad imagines how this journey may have appeared through a series of atmospheric and evocative photographs by Jeanine Michna-Bales. From over a decade's worth of research, Michna-Bales pieced together a route of Underground Railroad sites from the cotton plantations just south of Natchitoches, Louisiana, all the way north to the Canadian border, a path encompassing roughly two thousand miles. Complementing Michna-Bales' compelling photographs are essays on the history and figures of the Underground Railroad by Fergus M. Bordwich, Robert F. Darden, and Eric R. Jackson"--