A thoughtful and illuminating bicycle journey along the Underground Railroad by a climate scientist seeking to engage with American history. The traces of the Underground Railroad hide in plain sight: a great church in Philadelphia; a humble old house backing up to the New Jersey Turnpike; an industrial outbuilding in Ohio. Over the course of four years, David Goodrich rode his bicycle 3,000 miles east of the Mississippi to travel the routes of the Underground Railroad and delve into the history and stories in the places where they happened. He followed the most famous of conductors, Harriet Tubman, from where she was enslaved in Maryland, on the eastern shore, all the way to her family sanctuary at a tiny chapel in Ontario, Canada. Travelling South, he rode from New Orleans, where the enslaved were bought and sold, through Mississippi and the heart of the Delta Blues. As we pedal along with him, Goodrich brings us to the Borderland along the Ohio River, a kind of no-mans-land between North and South in the years before the Civil War. Here, slave hunters roamed both banks of the river, trying to catch people as they fled for freedom. We travel to Oberlin, Ohio, a town that staunchly defended freedom seekers, embodied in the life of Lewis Leary, who was lost in the fires of Harpers Ferry, but his spirit was reborn in the Harlem Renaissance. On Freedom Road enables us to see familiar places—New York and Philadelphia, New Orleans and Buffalo—in a very different light: from the vantage point of desperate people seeking to outrun the reach of slavery. Join in this journey to find the heroes and stories, both known and hidden, of the Underground Railroad.

The purpose of this book is to help those engaged in Christian formation, or those exploring faith perspectives for themselves, to see the Ten Commandments in a positive and liberating, rather than a restrictive, sense. Seen in the context of Israel’s story, the commandments are guidance toward a life of freedom in community. Commonly held meanings of faith, freedom, and love are challenged as social and political dimensions of this journey toward freedom are developed.

Between 1925 and 1967, Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps exchanged about 2,300 letters. Editor Charles H. Nichols has selected about 500 of the most interesting and significant within this book. These letters reveal the personalities of the writers, record significant literary activity or growth, present literary criticism, show the depth of the writers' concept of their responsibilities to their readers, and record significant developments in race relations in the United States and abroad.

Shines a fierce light on the effects of racsm in a cornet of Louisiana and, by doing so, illuminates the hearvy price paid for bigotry.