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FREEDOM STATION: A Partnership with the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Kevin Grace, Assistant Head of Archives and Rare Books, kevin.grace@uc.edu |
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Born into slavery on a Maryland plantation in1821, Harriet Tubman escaped from the South in 1849 making her way to freedom in the North. However, she soon returned to the South, not once, but more than 20 times until the beginning of the Civil War in 1861. Each time she made the surreptitious journey into the slave-holding states, she gathered other slaves like herself and helped them find their paths to freedom. At each designated stop along the way, escaping slaves found a freedom station, a place on the Underground Railroad to rest briefly and prepare to move on to the next safe haven before finally escaping bondage. Tubman helped free more than 300 slaves; not one was captured. Last spring, University Libraries entered into a partnership with the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center to add their digital library catalog records to UC's online catalog and to connect them to OhioLINK. The Freedom Center's digital library images will be added to OhioLINK's Digital Media Center. As a result of this collaboration between University Libraries and the Freedom Center, the University of Cincinnati was designated a "Freedom Station" on the Center's international network of museums, historical societies, libraries, and other organizations that provide research and educational resources about the Underground Railroad and other freedom and civil rights movements. UC provost Anthony J. Perzigian heralded this designation, saying, "This is just the beginning of what will surely be a long and productive partnership. Indeed, the educational and service missions of the University of Cincinnati and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center overlap in many ways." The Freedom Center's digital library will include images of a wide variety of Underground Railroad materials from its many "Freedom Stations," including maps, letters, photographs, oral history interviews, and other materials about the Underground Railroad. In the months ahead catalog records for these items will appear in UC's online catalog and the digitized images will be available for use by the educational and research community at large.
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