The Underground Railroad
Antebellum escape system
The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses in 19th-century America that helped enslaved Black people escape to free states and Canada.
Despite the name, it involved neither tunnels nor trains—the railroad terminology was code: conductors guided passengers between stations.
Harriet Tubman was its most famous conductor.
The term now appears in contexts about covert resistance: an underground railroad for refugees.
- freedomAbsence of constraint
- escapeFlight from captivity
- slaveryOwnership of people
- abolitionFormal discontinuation of practice
- North StarPole-aligned celestial beacon
Harriet Tubman · midnight escape · safe house · conductor · passengers · safe passage · fugitive · lantern · quilt · secret · night · journey · Canada · plantation · runaways · Moses · stations · hiding
- Adapted NovelsHarry Potter, The Hunger Games, Twilight, Jurassic Park, The Lord of the Rings
- Prime VideoJack Ryan, Reacher, Good Omens, Bosch, Hunters
- Black Literatureblack literature, black authors, slave narratives, Harlem Renaissance, Toni Morrison
- Abolitionismabolitionists, abolitionist movement, anti-slavery, antislavery, abolitionism
The Underground Railroadslave catchers
Pursuers of escaped bondspeople
slave patrols · slave auctions · bounty hunters · slave ships · slave markets
The Underground Railroadslave power
Enslaver political influence
fire-eaters · Dred Scott decision · plantation system · slave codes · chattel slavery
underground, railroad, ground, grounds, grounded, grounding, groundless, railed, railroads