For Immediate Release Sept. 7,1999

Note:  click here to see the DOT press release and pictures of the visit.

Rodney Slater to visit Underground Railroad Sites in Ohio

On Wednesday, Sept. 8, 1999 U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary, Mr. Rodney Slater will meet with members of the Friends of Freedom Society (FOFS) to visit historic Underground Railroad sites in the City of Springboro, OH. Slater will also speak at a Baptist Convention in Cincinnati later that evening.

The Friends of Freedom Society's Underground Railroad program has been designated by the federal agency as one of 16 National Millennium Trails as a part of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clintonıs White House Millennium Council's efforts to stimulate national and local activities, to "honor the past and imagine the future."

The public/private partnership is led by the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and a collaborative of other agencies and organizations. The American Express Corporation has contributed $500,000 to the project and the transportation department has set aside an additional $4 million for the trails.

Secretary Slater was moved by the jubilant applause that the Underground Railroad Trail received when the 16 national trails were announced at the International Trails and Greenways Conference in Pittsburgh this past June. Such interest and enthusiasm prompted him to seize the opportunity to visit some Underground Railroad sites during this visit.

We are thrilled that Secretary Slater will be visiting Springboro, particularly since it was recently designated as a National Historic District for the number of Underground Railroad homes in the area, stated Cathy D. Nelson, Friends of Freedom Society President. Springboro was a major station of freedom on a route leading away from Cincinnati. Countless runaways found shelter here, said Mr. Don Ross, local historian and researcher for the FOFS.  As far as we can tell, no one was ever captured or returned to bondage from Springboro.

The Friends of Freedom Society/Ohio Underground Railroad Association is an all volunteer, grassroots group who has researched and documented 600 sites that were a part of the dangerous and secretive network of places on the Underground Railroad.

Slater will visit the Jonathan Wright House, a well known Quaker abolitionist and conductor in Springboro, as well as meet with school children from local Clearcreek Elementary School who studied extensively about the Underground Railroad as part of a grant their teachers received to write a related curriculum.

It is hoped that Secretary Slater will talk about the Millennium Trails Program as a featured guest on a local Underground Railroad documentary currently being filmed, which will air in cities and towns across Ohio during the 4th Annual Ohio Underground Railroad Summit in October.

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