Acknowledgements and Bibliography
This section includes a bibliography of books and discography of music relating to the Underground Railroad movement …
Firstly I am indebted to those who have helped with providing information, references, recommended sources and in the correction of errors. Where original sources are known, these are cited ‘in situ’. The information provided within this website has been compiled from personal knowledge/research, books, websites, and numerous in-depth discussions with friends, most notably blues and gospel historian Max Haymes. The images used are believed to be in the public domain. I have not been able to establish any copyright claims on those that I have used. If this is not the case in respect of any image, if the copyright owner contacts me, I will remove it from the site.
The Bibliography lists my personal collection of recommended underground railroad books with publication details provided for further reference. They are listed in Title order rather than by author. Most of these books were used as sources for the website. Following the Bibliography is a Discography of music and video which relates to the underground railroad.
The Bibliography starts with ‘Underground Railroad Books’, followed by ‘Slavery’ and ‘Civil War’ books which include significant references to the underground railroad. I hope you find the content useful. If you have any recommendations of your own, or comments on the list, please let me know.
Some of the books listed are now out of print and hence unavailable to buy new. You may be lucky and come across an old copy.
Whilst I have taken every care to ensure details are correct, you may spot a mistake. If you do, please let me know and I will correct it as soon as I can.
Thanks,
Alan White.
Email: alan.white@undergroundrailroad.org.uk
| Underground Railroad Books |
| Title: | Beyond The River The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad |
| Author: | Ann Hagedorn |
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster Paperbacks |
| Date Published: | 2002 |
| ISBN: | 978-0-684-87066-3 |
| Notes: | Ann Hagedorn tells the remarkable story of the participants in the Ripley line of the Underground Railroad, bringing to life the struggle of the men and women, black and white, who fought “the war before the war” along the Ohio River. An inspiring story of courage and heroism that transports us to another era and deepens our understanding of the great social movement known as the Underground Railroad. |
| Title: | The Blood and The Blues |
| Author: | Danny Smith with Bill Hampson |
| Publisher: | Authentic Media |
| Date Published: | 2009 |
| ISBN: | 978-1-86024-709-5 |
| Notes: | Part One: Resistance – covers slavery, the Underground Railroad and the songs of runaway slaves.Part Two: Legacy – covers the musical heritage of slave songs, the Blues and how slave music ‘rocked the world’. |
| Title: | Bound for the Promised Land Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero |
| Author: | Kate Clifford Larson |
| Publisher: | One World |
| Date Published: | Reprint Edition: 2004 |
| ISBN: | 978-0345456281 |
| Notes: | Kate Clifford Larson is an historian and Harriet Tubman scholar. She is the consultant for the Harriet Tubman Special Resource Study of the National Park Service and serves on the advisory board of the Historic Context on the Underground Railroad in Delaware, Underground Railroad Coalition of Delaware.
See www.harriettubmanbiography.com for her excellent Harriet Tubman Biography website. |
| Title: | DK Biography: Harriet Tubman |
| Author: | Kem Knapp Sawyer |
| Publisher: | DK Publishing |
| Date Published: | 2010 |
| ISBN: | 978-0-7566-5806-0 |
| Notes: | DK Biography series for young 9-12 year old readers. |
| Title: | Front Line of Freedom: African Americans and the Forging of the Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley |
| Author: | Keith P. Griffler |
| Publisher: | The University Press of Kentucky |
| Date Published: | 2004 |
| ISBN: | 0-8131-2298-8 |
| Notes: | Describes the history of an interracial struggle against slavery. Refuting old notions of whites working and African Americans riding on the Underground Railroad, Griffin reveals meaningful collaboration between blacks and whites at every level of the enterprise. Long before soldiers donned blue and grey uniforms, the activities of free African Americans in the Ohio River Valley made the region an initial battleground in the protracted fight to end the institution of slavery in America. |
| Title: | Cincinnati’s Underground Railroad |
| Author: | Richard Cooper and Dr. Eric R. Jackson |
| Publisher: | Arcadia Publishing (Images of America Series) |
| Date Published: | 2014 |
| ISBN: | 978-1-4671-1136-0 |
| Notes: | The authors have compiled historic images from archives, libraries, and personal collections to illustrate the people, places, and events of the history of Cincinnati’s Underground Railroad. |
| Title: | Encyclopedia of The Underground Railroad |
| Author: | J. Blaine Hudson |
| Publisher: | McFarland & Company, Inc., North Carolina & London |
| Date Published: | 2006 |
| ISBN: | 978-0-7864-2459-7 |
| Notes: |
| Title: | Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderland |
| Author: | J. Blaine Hudson |
| Publisher: | McFarland |
| Date Published: | 2002 |
| ISBN: | 0-7864-1345-X |
| Notes: |
| Title: | Get On Board The Story of The Underground Railroad |
| Author: | Jim Haskins |
| Publisher: | Scholastic Inc. |
| Date Published: | 1993 |
| ISBN: | 0-590-45419-6 |
| Notes: | A notable children’s book on the subject |
| Title: | Harriet Tubman The Road to Freedom |
| Author: | Catherine Clinton |
| Publisher: | Little, Brown and Company |
| Date Published: | 2004 |
| ISBN: | 0-316-14492-4 |
| Notes: | Catherine Clinton is Professor of History at Queen’s University Belfast. She specializes in American History, with an emphasis on the history of the South.Recommended for general readers; academics are better served by Kate Clifford Larson’s Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman. |
| Title: | Hidden In Plain View A Secret Story Of Quilts and The Underground Railroad |
| Author: | Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard |
| Publisher: | First Anchor Books |
| Date Published: | 1999 |
| ISBN: | 0-385-49767-9 |
| Notes: | The frequently disputed theory of how enslaved men and women encoded messages within quilt patterns using ‘Ozella’s Code’ that helped fugitives navigate their escape along the Underground Railroad. Some historians support this theory while other historians dispute this as myth. “The quilt theory, as related in the book, is not supported by documentary evidence, such as slave memoirs, oral history interviews of escaped slaves, or abolitionist accounts of the Underground Railroad. It is based solely on one person’s oral history. With the absence of supporting evidence for the secret quilt code, as described in the book, quilt historians have challenged the plausibility of the quilt code and hence is not accepted by all as accurate.
In a 2007 Time Magazine article, Tobin (co-author of Hidden in Plain View) stated: “Whether or not it’s completely valid, I have no idea, but it makes sense with the amount of research we did.” While the quilt code and other similar theories may reflect a pride in the brave people who were active in the Underground Railroad, both as runaway slaves and those who helped them, it is a popular interest which may be either myth or fact”. |
| Title: | History of the Underground Railroad as it was Conducted by the Anti-Slavery League |
| Author: | Col. William M. Cockrum |
| Publisher: | Press of J. W. Cockrum Printing Company, Oakland City, Indiana |
| Date Published: | 1915 |
| ISBN: | None |
| Notes: | A significant source of information on the Underground Railroad in Indiana.Available as an ebook from The Library of Congress Internet Archive: http://archive.org/details/historyofundergr00cock |
| Title: | History of The Underground Railroad in Chester and The Neighbouring Counties of Pennsylvania |
| Author: | R. C. Smedley |
| Publisher: | Stackpole Books |
| Date Published: | Originally published in 1883 by the office of The Journal in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This new Stackpole paperback edition published 2005 with a Foreward by Mary Larkin Dougan, Kennett Underground Railroad Center http://undergroundrr.kennett.net/ |
| ISBN: | 0-8117-3189-8 |
| Notes: | R. C. Smedley’s 1883 seminal work documenting the real stories of white and black activists who worked on some of the most active and important secretive routes on the Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania.Contains one of three origins of the term ‘Underground Railroad’.
New Stackpole paperback edition available from www.stackpolebooks.com |
| Title: | Levi Coffin, Quaker: Breaking the bonds of slavery in Ohio and Indiana |
| Author: | Mary Ann Yannessa |
| Publisher: | Friends United Press |
| Date Published: | 2006 |
| ISBN: | 978-0-944350-54-6 |
| Notes: | A brief biography of Levi Coffin focussing primarily on Coffin’s abolitionist activities in Cincinnati, Ohio from 1847 through the civil war, and his work on behalf of freed blacks after the war. |
| Title: | Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave |
| Author: | Frederick Douglass Edited by John W. Blassingame, John R. Mc Kivigan and Peter P. Hinks |
| Publisher: | Yale University Press |
| Date Published: | 2001 |
| ISBN: | 978-0-300-08701-7 |
| Notes: | This book , which marked the beginning of Douglass’s career as an impassioned writer, journalist and orator for the abolitionist cause, reveals the terrors he faced as a slave, the brutalities of his owners and overseers, and his harrowing escape to the North. This edition of the book, based on the authoritative text that appears in Yale University Press’s multi-volume edition of the Frederick Douglass Papers, is the only edition of Douglass’s Narrative designated as an ‘Approved Text’ by the Modern Language Association’s Committee on Scholarly Editions. |
| Title: | Narrative of The Life of Henry Box Brown |
| Author: | Henry Box Brown |
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
| Date Published: | This version: 2002 – a reprinting of the Manchester, England edition of 1851.Henry Box Brown published two versions of his autobiography: 1) the first in Boston in 1849 titled ‘Narrative of Henry Box Brown who Escaped from Slavery Enclosed in a Box 3 Feet Long and 2 Wide Written from a Statement of Facts Made by Himself With Remarks upon the Remedy for Slavery. By Charles Stearns’ 2) the second in Manchester, England in 1851 titled ‘Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown.Written by Himself’ The real difference is that the second version is told in Brown’s own voice. |
| ISBN: | 0-19-514854-1 |
| Notes: | Introduction by Richard Newman, Fellows and Research Officer at the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University. |
| Title: | Narrative of Sojourner Truth |
| Author: | Sojourner Truth |
| Publisher: | Dover Publications Inc. |
| Date Published: | 1997 |
| ISBN: | 0-486-29899-X |
| Notes: | This edition is an unabridged re-publication of the original work ‘Narrative of Sojourner Truth, A Northern Slave’. Sojourner Truth dictated her memories to her friend Olive Gilbert and in 1850 William Lloyd Garrison privately published her book in Boston. |
| Title: | Passages To Freedom The Underground Railroad in History and Memory |
| Author: | Edited by David W. Blight |
| Publisher: | Smithsonian Books |
| Date Published: | 2004 |
| ISBN: | 978-0-06-085118-7 |
| Notes: | Published on the occasion of the opening of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, Passages to Freedom brings together a remarkable series of 15 beautifully illustrated essays by outstanding historians which bring home the reality of slavery’s destructiveness and how the journey out of slavery both haunts and inspires us today. |
| Title: | Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times: How He “Fought the Good Fight” to Prepare “The Way” |
| Author: | Rev. Calvin Fairbank |
| Publisher: | R.R. McCabe & Co., Chicago |
| Date Published: | 1890 |
| ISBN: | |
| Notes: | Contains one of three origins of the term ‘Underground Railroad’. |
| Title: | The Slave Catchers Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law 1850-1860 |
| Author: | Stanley W. Campbell |
| Publisher: | W. W. Norton & Company |
| Date Published: | 1970 |
| ISBN: | 393 00626 3 |
| Notes: | The Fugitive Slave Law, enacted as part of the Compromise of 1850, was designed to enable slave-owners to reclaim their property, even if the fugitives had escaped to a free state. The law aroused furious opposition in the northern states and has generally, been regarded as a failure – unenforceable and unenforced. In The Slave Catchers, the first full treatment of the practical consequences of the Fugitive Slave Law, Stanley. W. Campbell offers detailed new evidence that this view is far from accurate. |
| Title: | Underground Railroad |
| Author: | National Park Service |
| Publisher: | U.S. Department of the Interior |
| Date Published: | 1998 |
| ISBN: | 9780912627649 |
| Notes: | 88 page booklet (Official National Park Handbook 156) available from www.bookstore.gpo.govIn 1990 the US Congress directed the Secretary of the Interior acting through the Director of the National Parks Service to prepare and publish this interpretive handbook on the Underground Railroad in the larger context of American antebellum society, including the history of slavery and abolitionism. |
| Title: | The Underground Railroad Authentic Narratives and First-Hand Accounts |
| Author: | William Still |
| Publisher: | Dover Publications Inc., New York |
| Date Published: | 2007 |
| ISBN: | 0-486-45553-X |
| Notes: | When the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished, William Still published his journals of vivid accounts of former slaves he helped conduct northwards on the Underground Railroad. This is considered the most complete firsthand account ever written on the men, women and children who rode the legendary Railroad to freedom.Dover original compilation of selections from the edition published by Porter and Coates, Philadelphia, 1872. |
| Title: | The Underground Railroad From Slavery to Freedom |
| Author: | Wilbur Henry Siebert |
| Publisher: | The Macmillan Company, New York |
| Date Published: | 1898 |
| ISBN: | None |
| Notes: | Now digitally re-mastered and available in the Classic Reprint Series of ‘Forgotten Books’, see www.forgottenbooks.orgContains one of three origins of the term ‘Underground Railroad’. |
| Title: | The Underground Railroad in Connecticut |
| Author: | Horatio T. Strother |
| Publisher: | Wesleyan University Press |
| Date Published: | 1962 |
| ISBN: | 978-0-8195-6012-4 |
| Notes: |
| Title: | The Underground Railroad: Next Stop Toronto! |
| Author: | Adrienne Shadd, Afua Cooper and Karolyn Smardz Frost |
| Publisher: | Natural Heritage Books, A Member of The Dundurn Group, Toronto |
| Date Published: | 2nd Edition, 2005 |
| ISBN: | 978-1-55488-429-2 |
| Notes: | A companion work to the ‘Parks Canada’ experimental theatre exhibit “The Underground Railroad : Next Stop Freedom!” as a study of African-Canadian Underground Railroad History and the urban story of the UGRR in Toronto. |
| Title: | Underground Railroad in Delaware, Maryland and West Virginia |
| Author: | William J. Switala |
| Publisher: | Stackpole Books |
| Date Published: | 2004 |
| ISBN: | 0-8117-3143-X |
| Notes: | Available from www.stackpolebooks.com |
| Slavery Books with references to the Underground Railroad | |
| Title: | |
| Author: | |
| Publisher: | |
| Date Published: | |
| ISBN: | |
| Notes: | |
| Civil War Books with references to the Underground Railroad | |
| Title: | Battle Cry of Freedom |
| Author: | James M. McPherson |
| Publisher: | Penguin History |
| Date Published: | 1990 |
| ISBN: | 978-0-140-12518-4 |
| Notes: | |
| Fictional Books with references to Slavery / the Underground Railroad | |
| Title: | Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among The Lowly (Vol. 1 & 2) |
| Author: | Harriet Beecher Stowe |
| Publisher: | Originally published by John P. Jewitt & Company, Cleveland, Ohio |
| Date Published: | 1852 |
| ISBN: | None |
| Notes: | Many editions from various publishers available now. “Published in 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought the abolitionists message to he White House and beyond – no woman before or since Harriet Beecher Stowe has so successfully written a novel designed to motivate America to act on a major issue of the day. Controversial still, this novel has weathered continual debates on all aspects of its writing and its subject matter. Accurate in its portrayal of the slave experience, brilliant in its narrative structure and use of dialogue, and profoundly feminist in its implications.” – Penguin Classics |
| Title: | The Underground Railroad |
| Author: | Colson Whitehead |
| Publisher: | Fleet |
| Date Published: | 6th October 2016 |
| ISBN: | 978-0708898390 |
| Notes: | From prize-winning, bestselling author Colson Whitehead, a magnificent, wrenching, thrilling tour de force chronicling a young slave’s adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. |
| CD Recordings | |
| Title: | Steal Away Songs of the Underground Railroad |
| Performed by: | Various |
| Produced by: | Kim and Reggie Harris |
| Publisher: | Appleseed Recordings |
| Date Published: | 1997 |
| Notes: | See http://www.kimandreggie.com/cds_001c.htm for CDs for sale |
| Title: | Get On Board! Underground Railroad & Civil Rights Freedom Songs, Vol. 2 |
| Performed by: | Various |
| Produced by: | Kim and Reggie Harris |
| Publisher: | Appleseed Recordings |
| Date Published: | 2006 |
| Notes: | See http://www.kimandreggie.com/cds_001c.htm for CDs for sale |
| DVD Recordings | |
| Title: | Underground Railroad |
| Performed by: | Various |
| Produced by: | The History Channel (USA) |
| Publisher: | The History Channel (USA) |
| Date Published: | 1998 |
| Notes: | A documentary that unveils the history, heroes, and villains of the Abolitionist movement. |