Exploring the Underground Railroad in the West

African American gold miner in California's Sierra Nevadas, 1852

Courtesy of the California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento, California

The National Park Service (NPS) National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program, the NPS Pacific West Cultural Resources Program, and the Organization of American Historians (OAH) hosted a virtual public forum to explore current scholarship surrounding the history of the Underground Railroad in California, Oregon, and Washington. You can watch the recorded YouTube livestream.

Many celebrate the history of the West as one filled with innovation and personal freedoms. However, not all people experienced the West in the same way. Even though California entered the United States as a free state, the government allowed some forms of slavery, limiting African Americans' personal freedoms. Scholars today are examining freedom seekers' individual courage and the actions they took to secure their full freedom. It is critical to illuminate these stories of resistance as communities continue to struggle for freedom, justice, and equity.

Thanks to everyone who attended the public forum. We appreciated the lively discussion and look forward to preserving this important history together.

To learn more about the preservation work of the Network to Freedom and how you can get started, head to our website. Want to stay in the loop? Join our mailing list by sending a request to e-mail us.

The panel included expert scholars whose work addresses the history of race, slavery, freedom seeking and migration in the West. They include:

• Albert Broussard, Professor at Texas A&M, will chair the panel. A trailblazer in researching and writing Black history, he has authored Black San Francisco: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the West, American History: The Early Years to 1877 with Donald A. Ritchie, and African American Odyssey: The Stewarts, 1853-1963, among other works. His recent research includes considerations of African American civil rights dialogues in Hawai’i.
• Katrina Jagodinsky, Associate Professor of History and Graduate Chair at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is a legal historian who examines marginalized peoples’ engagement with 19th-century legal regimes and competing jurisdictions through the West.
• Andrés Reséndez, Professor in the Social Science Department at UC Davis, specializes in early European exploration and colonization of the Americas, the U.S-Mexico border region, and the early history of the Pacific.
• Stacey Smith, History Professor at Oregon State University, focuses on the history of the North American West, with a particular emphasis on race relations, labor, and politics during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras.
• Kevin A. Waite, Assistant Professor in Modern American History at Durham University in the UK, is a political historian of the 19th-century United States with a focus on slavery, imperialism, and the American West.