“Still, William.—Secretary of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee of the Underground Railroad. Born October 7, 1821, in Burlington County, New Jersey.”
“Walker, David.—First Negro to attack slavery through the press. Born free at Wilmington, North Carolina, 1785.”
“Gibbs, Miffin Wistar.—Lawyer and anti-slavery agitator; born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April, 1823. He died in Little Rock, Ark., July 11, 1915.”
“Knights of Liberty.—In 1846 Moses Dickson and eleven other free Negroes organized at St. Louis, The Knights of Liberty for the purpose of overthrowing slavery. Ten years was to be spent working slowly and secretly making their preparations and extending the society.”
Reference: (Work’s Negro Year Book; pages 168-69-70-71, 1918-1919 edition)
To the Colored boys and girls who desire to learn more about such mysterious underground railroad trains, that with their nervy and plucky passengers holding on with all their might, were constantly diving into and running under rivers as well as climbing upon and rolling down mountain sides without ever being wrecked or seldom losing a passenger, the writer begs to offer the following suggestion:
Any evening when such boys and girls suddenly get a burning thirst to visit the “movies” and drink in the red-blooded and heroic screen capers of a Wm. S. Hart, a Pearl White or a Douglass Fairbanks; let those boys and girls go to the nearest library instead, secure a copy of William Still’s “Underground Railroad Records”, and return home with it. In its stories they will find just as hair-raising adventures and exciting escapes as are to be found in any of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes detective cases; between its leaves they will find the same kind of serious wit and humor that smile up from a Walt Mason newspaper article; from cover to cover they will find the same kind of heart-rending and flesh-suffering word pictures that Longfellow and other authors have so vividly painted in telling of the expulsions and wanderings of the doomed Arcadians; but, last and most important of all they will find every one of its pages to contain as true and valuable American history as ever appeared in the writings of a Bancroft, a Fiske, a Higginson, a Prescott or a Ridpath.
