Washed Series: Historian Timothy D. Walker on “Sailing to Freedom: Recovering and Re-centering the Maritime Dimension of the Underground Railroad”

Monday, September 30, 5:30 – 7:00pm: Join Providence Public Library for a talk by Timothy D. Walker, Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, on Sailing to Freedom: Recovering and Re-centering the Maritime Dimension of the Underground Railroad as part of their Washed Series.

Dr. Walker’s talk will highlight little-known stories of freedom-seeking by sea, describe the less-understood maritime side of the Underground Railroad, and reconsider and contextualize the importance of enslaved African Americans’ maritime and waterfront labor in southern ports, and how escapes were managed along the East Coast, moving from the Carolinas, Virginia, and Maryland to safe harbor in northern cities such as Philadelphia, New York, New Bedford, and Boston.  While scholarship on the Underground Railroad has focused almost exclusively on overland escape routes from the antebellum South, this new research expands our understanding of how freedom was achieved by sea and what this journey looked like for untold numbers of African Americans.  With few exceptions, successful escapes from enslavement in the Deep South were achieved not overland, but by water.

A limited number of copies of Sailing to Freedom: Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad, edited by Dr. Walker, will be available for sale and signing after his talk; sales are by cash or check only.

Dr. Timothy Walker (Hiram College, 1986; MA/PhD Boston University 2000), Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, is a scholar of maritime history, colonial overseas expansion, and trans-oceanic slave trading. Walker is a guest investigator of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a contributing faculty member of the Munson Institute of Maritime Studies, and Director of the National Endowment for the Humanities “Landmarks in American History” workshops series for middle- and high school teachers, titled “Sailing to Freedom: New Bedford and the Underground Railroad” (2011–2022).

This program is free and open to the public, and takes place in the third floor Seminar Room; seating is limited, and registration is greatly appreciated!

This talk is part of PPL’s series Washed, which posits the sea as a dynamic space of ungovernability, constant motion, unfixability, and indeterminacy, and investigates how this state of fluidity makes it a potential space of literal and metaphorical transformation, transit, migration, dissolution, washing away, anointing, forgetting, and renewal. Join them this year to consider the role of water within our histories and futures, and engage with issues around identity, environmental justice, sea rise, fishing and harvesting rights, energy sourcing, and coastal access – impacting all of us who live within the fragile ecosystem of the “Ocean State,” and our region (and world) more broadly. 

Washed is made possible in part through a grant from RI Humanities.