Thursday, June 9th at 4:00 p.m. (Grades K–3)

Come to the Library Plaza to hear the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award winning book, Underground: Finding the Light to Freedom, by Shane W. Evans, along with other stories and poetry related to the Underground Railroad. Then work on a Harriet Tubman craft project!

The Underground Railroad:

In 1619, the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia, one of the newly formed 13 American Colonies. They had been kidnapped from their homes and were forced to work on tobacco, rice, and indigo plantations from Maryland and Virginia all the way to Georgia. According to the law, they had no rights and were not free. Escaping to freedom was anything but easy for an enslaved person. It required courage, wit, and determination. Many fled by themselves or in small numbers, often without food, clothes, or money. Leaving behind family members. The Underground Railroad was not underground, and it wasn’t an actual train. It was a network of people, both whites and free Blacks, who worked together to help runaways from slaveholding states travel to states in the North and to the country of Canada, where slavery was illegal. The Underground Railroad was a social movement that started when ordinary people joined together to make a change in society. It’s an example of how people, regardless of their race or economic status, united for a common cause. https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/the-underground-railroad

Resources:

Harriet Tubman, secret agent : how daring slaves and free Blacks spied for the Union during the Civil War, by Thomas B. Allen.
Library Catalog

Unspoken: a story of the Underground Railroad, by Henry Cole.
Library Catalog
Barefoot: escape on the Underground Railroad, by Pamela Duncan Edwards.
Library Catalog
Underground: Finding the Light to Freedom, by Shane Evans.
Library Catalog
Libby
The price of freedom: how one town stood up to slavery, by Judith Bloom Fradin.
Library Catalog
North star to freedom: the story of the Underground Railroad, by Gena Kinton Gorrell.
Library Catalog
Freedom roads: searching for the Underground Railroad, by Joyce Hansen.
Library Catalog
Under the quilt of night, by Deborah Hopkinson.
Library Catalog
Henry’s freedom box, by Ellen Levine.
Library Catalog
Libby
If You Traveled on the Underground Railroad, by Ellen Levine.
Library Catalog
Who was Harriet Tubman?, by Yona Zeldis McDonough.
Library Catalog
Libby
¿Quién fue Harriet Tubman, by Yona Zeldis McDonough.
Library Catalog
A picture of freedom: the diary of Clotee, a slave girl, by Pat McKissack.
Library Catalog
I am Harriet Tubman, by Brad Meltzer.
Library Catalog
Libby
January’s sparrow, by Patricia Polacco.
Library Catalog
Freedom river, by Doreen Rappaport.
Library Catalog
F is for freedom, by Roni Schotter.
Library Catalog
Hidden in plain view: the secret story of quilts and the Underground Railroad, by Jacqueline Tobin.
Library Catalog
Freedom song: the story of Henry “Box” Brown, by Sally M. Walker.
Library Catalog
Box: Henry Brown mails himself to freedom, by Carole Boston Weatherford.
Library Catalog
Libby
Freedom’s wings: Corey’s diary, by Sharon Dennis Wyeth.
Library Catalog