Hi Bennie:

Thanks for sharing the response to the Underground Railroad Meeting from Henry Robert Burke.

He raises an important question about the name and history of the Underground Railroad and how it may or may not apply to every region of the US. I read your posting regarding the program and its historians. Unfortunately I don't have access to the content of the presentations . As a result, I have no way of knowing if the historians or the National Park Services defined or explained how the Underground Railroad (as we understand its history) included the Lower South, in particular, Florida, Louisiana and states that hugged the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and the south Atlantic.

I agree that this is not a forum for a debate on the Underground Railroad, but the title of this meeting is puzzling. The title of Underground Railroad in its strictest sense would not include the majority of slaves who looked south to the Caribbean for liberation and not to the North. I imagine that the creators of this important meeting applied the term "Underground Railroad" as an escape to Freedom with or without the North Star.

I assume that the historians had to mention Fort Mose (pronounced Mo say) in Florida, since it was one of the oldest black communities. Although it was destroyed, Fort Mose rose again to become a strong hold for resistance during the Second Spanish Interlude.

I was also puzzled by a quote written by Earnest McBride of The Jackson Advocate and attributed to Chuck Siler a historian from Louisiana. McBride wrote that "St. Malo is the only documented maroon leader in the United States,” Siler says." Then who "led" the people of Fort Mose? What about the African Prince Witten?

Perhaps some of the friends of Afrigeneas could add to our knowledge of slavery and resistance in the Lower South. Afrigeneas interviewed Dr. Jane Landers noted author and historian who studied the maroon cultures of the Floridas. The centerpiece of the interview was based on her landmark book, "Black Society in Spanish Florida." George Geder Manager of the Afrigeneas Book Forum is planning an upcoming interview with Dr. Madeleine Burnside on her book, "Spirits of the Passage: The Transatlantic Slave trade in the 17th Century". Her book is prefaced by Cornell West is a companion to Dr. Burnside's creation of the national tour of "A Slave Ship Speaks: The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie."

Stay tuned and visit Geder's Afrigeneas Book Forum for time and date.

The comments by everyone underline the historical fact that Africans in the Americas always resisted their enslavement in all regions of the US. Some were slaves who sailed away to the Caribbean or the Bahamas. Some were free people of color who chose freedom rather than re-enslavement and sought refuge en masse in Tampico.

I respectfully defer to those who study and chronicle the Underground Railroad and the flight to freedom to the North...While I wait impatiently for historians of the black American experience to focus on the monumental research of Larry Rivers and Canter Brown of Florida A & M, Jane Landers, Madeleine Burnside who have chronicled our Florida history.

Bennie, can we get information on the presentations?

K Wyer Lane