Underground Railroad stamps honor those who helped enslaved people achieve freedom

The U.S. Postal Service has unveiled several stamps honoring the ingenuity, courage and resilience of 10 brave men and ladies who helped lead enslaved people to freedom through a network of secret routes and hideouts generally known as the Underground Railroad.

According to press releasethe set of 20 stamps depicts freedom seekers and those who helped others escape. On the reverse side, a map illustrates the wide trails and explanation of the underground rail network resulting in freedom from the National Park Service.

“For many enslaved African Americans, the Underground Railroad was their only hope to escape the brutality of slavery,” said USPS Board of Governors member Ronald A. Stroman.

Katarzyna Coffin

Coffin and her husband Levi moved to Newport, Wayne County – now the borough of Fountain City, Indiana – in 1826. Their home was near essential evacuation routes connecting many cities within the North and Canada. Historians imagine the coffins helped about 2,000 African Americans escape slavery via the Underground Railroad over a 20-year period by providing them with food, clothing and shelter. She died on May 22, 1881 in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Frederick Douglass

Douglass was a slave for a few years until, on September 3, 1838, he escaped under the pretense of being a free black sailor and went to New York. After moving to New Bedford, Massachusetts, he began attending abolitionist meetings and shortly rose to prominence as some of the famous black men in history, known for his speeches opposing slavery and promoting women’s suffrage. He served in several political appointments — including U.S. ambassador to Haiti, Secretary of Legislation for the District of Columbia (Thomas), and U.S. Marshal — before dying of a heart attack on the age of 77.

Thomas Garrett

At the age of 24, Garrett managed to free a kidnapped black woman destined for slavery within the South. He has since develop into best known for his ongoing efforts to assist and defend enslaved African Americans and abolish the practice. Despite threats, assaults, arrests, harassment and a $10,000 reward for his capture, he helped all freedom seekers, helping over 2,500 fugitives to freedom before he died on the age of 82.

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Laura Haviland

Haviland spent much of her life advocating for social justice and education by lobbying, leading protests, influencing laws, or organizing public demonstrations against the actual injustices she faced. In 1837, she and her husband founded the Raisin Institute, an academy accepting “all of good moral character”, no matter race. After her husband’s death, she visited the South continuously and have become more energetic within the Underground Railroad. She founded an orphanage primarily for black children and arranged relief efforts for wounded or imprisoned soldiers in the course of the Civil War, in addition to former slaves, refugees, and those still illegally enslaved.

Lewis Hayden

After escaping from slavery within the mid-1840s, Hayden and his family settled in Boston, where he opened a successful clothing store. He took on many responsibilities within the local abolitionist movement and was a key a part of Boston’s Underground Railroad network. As a member of the manager committee of the Boston Vigilance Committee, Hayden reportedly raised funds, donated clothing, boarded freedom seekers, and transported them out of Boston, leading to direct and sometimes dangerous actions. He was probably certainly one of the primary employees of the black state. For 30 years he worked as a messenger for the Secretary of State, because of which he had access to many outstanding figures from state government. He died in 1889.

Harriet Jacobs

Jacobs, a freedom seeker, author and abolitionist, suffered years of physical violence and sexual abuse by the hands of Dr. James Norcom, the daddy of a three-year-old girl to whom she and her brother were convicted in 1825. In 1835, she escaped and took refuge in her grandmother’s cramped attic , where she lived for nearly seven years before heading north on the subway, in response to her biography “Events in the Life of a Slave Girl.” Ten years later, legally free, she worked as a humanitarian employee, committed to helping recently freed Southerners at the top of the Civil War.

William Lambert

Before the Civil War, Lambert was some of the energetic African Americans in Detroit, running a successful tailoring business and a dry cleansing business along with his public activities. Lambert worked with the Underground Railroad, chaired the Detroit Vigilance Committee, founded a secret African-American order, served as a deacon in his church, and advocated for publicly funded education for African-American children. He died in 1890.

A Detroit Tribune reporter interviewed Lambert in 1886 about his pre-Civil War activities, and the resulting newspaper article became a big source of knowledge about antebellum Detroit and African American activities.

Jermain Logue

Loguen stole his master’s horse and escaped slavery in 1834. In 1841, now married with children, he moved his family to Syracuse, New York, where he worked as a teacher and obtained a license to evangelise. He was a staunch supporter of abolitionism and gained notoriety as some of the energetic Underground Railroad agents within the country. In open letters to the Syracuse press, Loguen revealed his whereabouts and asked for funds to support others in need of help. He has reportedly helped over 1,500 freedom seekers.

William Still

Before becoming a successful businessman, Still worked as a clerk and janitor for the Pennsylvania Slavery Abolition Society in 1847. Shortly thereafter, he began helping escaped enslaved people, providing shelter until they might make it further north and keeping accurate records of those who he helped. One of the fugitives was his older brother, Peter, left behind when his mother fled some 40 years earlier.

Fearing that his fugitive aid papers may be used to prosecute people, Still destroyed a lot of them before the Civil War. After the war, his children convinced him to jot down about his efforts and the people he helped. Still’s book “The Underground Railroad” (1872) is some of the essential historical documents.

Harriet Tubman

William Still taught Tubman much in regards to the Underground Railroad, and in 1850 she returned to Maryland for her family from whom she had been separated a few years earlier. Between 1850 and 1860, she led roughly 70 people – including her parents, Ben and Rita – to freedom via the Underground Railroad. Many African Americans – each free and enslaved – called her “Moses” after the biblical figure. “I never threw a train off the tracks and I never lost a passenger,” Tubman once said when discussing her achievements.

Enslaved people made continuous attempts to free themselves from slavery, starting with its introduction within the Colony until 1865, when the ratification of the thirteenth Amendment led to its nationwide abolition. Whether traveling by foot, horse, carriage, wagon, or boat, the journey to freedom was difficult and very dangerous.

“The Underground Railroad demonstrated the power of collective action and solidarity to achieve social change, even when the odds seemed insurmountable,” Stroman added. “The United States Postal Service is honored to celebrate the ingenuity and resilience of an enslaved people and those who courageously helped them in the face of adversity by dedicating these new stamps.”