 Hello, I am Diane Miller, the program manager for the National Park Service National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. I'm glad that you're able to join our session. The National Park Service Network to Freedom program was established in 1998 with legislation that directed the National Park Service to commemorate and honor the Underground Railroad as a crucial element in the evolution of our nation's civil rights movement. Our mission through collaboration with local, state, and federal entities, as well as individuals and organizations, is to honor, preserve, and promote the history of resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, which continues to inspire people worldwide. The focus of the Underground Railroad is on the enslaved people who self-liperated. They're the center of the story, and that is the story that the National Park Service seeks to tell. We do that by empowering communities to identify, document, preserve, interpret, and tell the story of the Underground Railroad. Whether it is in their community, whether it's their ancestors, our mission is just to uplift their efforts. I want to make sure that we focus on the centrality of the Freedom Seeker rather than the assistance provided by allies. That is certainly part of the story, and we do include those things in the Underground Railroad story, but it's much faster than that. It is places that people escape from. Where did they journey? Where were rescues and kidnappings? Who were the churches or congregations, institutions that assisted Freedom Seekers? It was really a vast resistance movement, and that is the story that we are trying to help surface through our work with communities. And so that's why we're really pleased today to bring you this collection of community people that have been doing this work for the Underground Railroad. I am going to pass this off to Network for Freedom intern Winnie Cargill, who has been working with us diligently on bringing this information to the public, and she is going to moderate this discussion. Winnie. Thank you, Diane. I wanted to give a little bit about the process of how we chose these three individuals. So after reviewing the National Trust call for proposals, the theme that aligned with the Network for Freedom members and preservation was Encouraging Inclusion and Diversity through Preservation. And this is a topic that I've been thinking about a lot for the past two years. I started my internship with the Network for Freedom while I also started my graduate studies in historic preservation and community planning at the University of Maryland College Park. And themes of inclusion, community development, and more diversity and preservation have intersected between my work and my studies. And throughout my time with the program, I've had questions of how Network for Freedom members have to find historical integrity and significance, as well as how they viewed and define sites that had little to no physical integrity. So Diane helped me find these three individuals that we think best represent the answers to these questions. And these three sites are Forks of the Road, Abyssinian Meeting House, and New Philadelphia. We'll start with the community member associated with Forks of the Road, which is Sir Boxley. A little bit about Sir Boxley. He has a master's in urban planning from San Jose State University. He's a regional and urban planner, a coordinator of FRSI, Fort McPherson, Sun's Daughters of the US, Color Troops, Black and Blue Civil War Living History Program, and Forks of the Road Enslavement Market Sites from Forgotten to a National Park Service Park. Sir Boxley, can you please briefly describe the site and its significance? Well, thank you very much. The site that my person chose to serve as an equalizer to the huge amount of plantation tourism and preservation in Natchez, Mississippi was called the Forks of the Road. It's a juncture where three roads in the east side of Natchez came adjourn each other. And I learned that in looking for a site that would speak to the masses of people rather than any particular person, that this site, at this site called the Forks of the Road operated from 1833 until the Civil War as a site for the America's domestic enslavement trafficking to the south as far as Natchez is concerned. And that meant that the long distance dealers that operated from in the upper south forced bringing enslaved people over what I call the overground railroad down to the south and to Natchez, Forks of the Road. Whether the market places for Franklin and Amphill, the Kentucky dealers, Richmond and St. Louis and other places where professional enslavement traffickers would force bring enslaved people in captivity for resale. That's exactly what this site speaks to and was about. Thank you, Sir Boxley. Our next presenter is Debra Kadri. She's a founder and also part of the committee to restore the Abyssinian Meeting House in Portland, Maine. Debbie, can you please talk about, describe the site as well as its significance? The Abyssinian was created or established in around 1828, 27 somewhere in there. We vacillate back and forth. I think depending on which one of us has been up the longest that date as to what date we use. I'm kidding. And I discovered it as the Abyssinian Meeting House in 1987, 88, if you will. It was an old deteriorated building. And thanks to somebody who I identify as the Godfather of the Abyssinian, as we know it now, was the editor of the Portland Press Herald who wrote an editorial one day based on what he thought was a historic building. He posed the question, who could save this building? I happened to be living in Atlanta at the time with a newborn, so I had a few hours to spend. I said, I'll take a look at it. I said, this should be a no-brainer. That was, as I said, in 1987, 88. We are just now finishing the exterior restoration. We'll begin the interior very soon in the next few months here. The building was a church originally, part of the 4th Congregational Baptist Church here in Portland, Maine. And it has since been, has many iterations of a structure its size would be. And I'm looking forward to talking more about it. What was your other question, Winnie? The other question was, what is the significance of the site? Okay. It's historic structure. It's the third oldest. It was identified as the third oldest standing African American Meeting House when we founded it back, when we founded it as the, working on it as the restored Abyssinian Meeting House. Today, I was in a meeting with, actually, our Senator came to the building a few weeks ago. And I told him I wanted to confirm that what we knew, what we've been talking about for 25 years is factually still true. So I'll be looking into that more. I believe it is. It's the third oldest standing African American Meeting House in the country. And as I said, it was created in 1837, 38-ish. Thank you for that, Debbie. Our last presenter is Professor Gerald McWhorter. He represents the story of New Philadelphia and Barry Illinois as the great, great grandson of the founders of Free Frank and Free Lucy McWhorter. He is a professor at the University of Illinois with a PhD from the University of Chicago. With his wife, Kate, he is the co-author of the book New Philadelphia 2018. He's also the vice president of the New Philadelphia Association. Professor McWhorter, can you please briefly describe the site and its significance? Thank you very much for having me and featuring New Philadelphia on this program. New Philadelphia is an abolitionist town that was established in 1836, which was the first town legally platted and registered by an African American in the United States. Free Frank and Free Lucy came to Illinois from Kentucky after purchasing themselves out of slavery in 1830. The town was 42 acres, 144 lots, with 22 streets. It has been recognized by the federal government in many ways. In 1988, my aunt, Alma, and her daughter, Juliet, were able to get the grave site of Free Frank recognized as a national register of historic places, which was the third such grave site recognized in Illinois after Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. The town itself was on the national register of historic places in 2005. And then it became a national historic landmark in 2009. And then finally the network for freedom of the Underground Railroad of the National Park Service recognized New Philadelphia in 2013. It's currently being considered by Congress to become a national park. So one major aspect of its significance, of course, is that it is the first town, such town, by an African American. But also because of the 19th century story of the historic struggle against slavery, the moral and political struggle against slavery, we recognize Mark Twain in Hannibal, Missouri, and Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, and other places in Illinois. But right in the middle of that is the agency of an African American. And so it's very important in telling the story of the Underground Railroad and the Freedom Seekers that this was an act of self-determination by the African Americans, not only the ones that were seeking freedom, but of the many who assisted. And the McWhorters and the people of New Philadelphia were part of that story. Thank you, Professor McWhorter. In the next slide, we will let Sir Boxley give a more in-depth talk about Forks of the Road. Okay. This particular slide shows on the upper left the first activity, public activity, that my person conducted after choosing the Forks of the Road as a site to be the equalizer to the stories that made it look like this. It looked like the enslavers and then the whites did everything by themselves. This is a site that shows an old building that was on the site, the first site. There were really three sites at the Forks of the Road that were operated by enslavement traffickers, or long distance traffickers. This one particularly is how I first started to introduce to the public what had happened at this site and the traditional African libation is a prayer or an offering or an acknowledgement of the spirits of enslave persons or any particular person that has passed on. Even in living, you can offer a libation which energizes the spirits of people. In this case, this is the very first public event that my person conducted as part of the June tea celebration in 1995 at the site that is historically designated as the Forks of the Road. The slide to the right shows you the site and its present situation without the building in it as such. The ad above the slides, this is an ad by John James, anyway, it's an ad that was in a local newspaper that I was able to find that actually began to give visible proof to what happened at the site, to the operation at the site. And of course, as I went on over the years since 1995, I've found hundreds of ads where there are different long distance dealers and in some cases local dealers who were offering up enslaved people for sale at the Forks of the Road. The other item that I'd like to talk about in this slide is the Civil War. I'd like to say that the Forks of the Road talks about what they did to our ancestors and with the Civil War when the Emancipation Proclamation allowed for enslaved people and non enslaved people, blacks, African descendants to become Union Army freedom fighters enrolled in the Union Army and help it. Then I say the black history in the Civil War talks about what enslaved people and non enslaved people did to enslavers. In other words, one talks about being enslaved and the other one talks about self emancipation and fighting against the Confederate South. And of course, one of the other items that I was able to produce with the help actually is the first traveling exhibition that I was able to produce about the Forks of the Road and about the subject of slavery called the African European Roots of the Underground Railroad. This is a exhibition that travel around the country that educated folks about the places in Africa that the Europeans held our African ancestors in prison and they're force bringing out of the doors of no return to the Americans to be enslaved and on the eastern seaboard. And then eventually the internal enslavement trafficking from the Upper South down to the new Lower Southwest at the Forks of the Road. Thank you, Sir Boxley. This next slide includes more pictures as well as a physical representation of the three sites that Sir Boxley mentioned. Would you like to add anything else to this slide, Sir Boxley? Okay, actually the group slide that you see at the bottom to the right, that was a group of performers, amateurs that we had organized into a play, a demonstration of what could happen at the Forks of the Road to tell the history. And the title of that slide of that play was Slavery Meased Freedom at the Forks of the Road. And essentially what we had was a variety of students from Alcon College and local community people. We would carry out in the beginning introduction and continuing story the history of enslaved people being sold there at the Forks of the Road. And then by the time we get to the end, we're talking about when the Union Army occupies Natchez in July 13th of 1863 that an established recruitment station at the Forks of the Road does Slavery Meased Freedom at the Forks of the Road. And then we would introduce some of the folks in uniform and tell a story, particularly about the Battle of Vardalian in February 1864, where enslaved people as soldiers of the Six Heavy artillery defeated the elite Texas Confederates on February 7th. On the left side is a picture of a brochure that we produced with a grant from the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom that intended, and its intent was to begin to educate folks about the history of the Forks of the Road. And on the right side of that Y section, that's where you get the Forks of the Road concept. You see the site where the notorious Franklin and Amphil, either Franklin and John Amphil and all of their associates who were based at 1315 Duke Street in Alexander, Virginia, the building is still a stat, it still exists where they operate from. That's where their selling headquarters was operating at the Forks of the Road, even though the narrative was saying that they came around the Atlantic Seacoast and stopped in New Orleans, but their destination was to their selling headquarters at the Forks of the Road. And the triangular piece in the V, within the roads where it says the site for John D. James, this was the dealer who was looked to Richmond, Virginia, where his partner and brothers were the persons who were ill-getting enslaved people in Richmond and shipping into his headquarters there at night. He's one of the first major operations in the 1850s in that site. And then to the left is a site that was credited to, is credited to the enslavement dealer from Kentucky, Robert H. Elam. And happily that particular site has just been acquired by the Natus National Historic Park, and so was the one inside of the triangle. So those two pieces of property are now property of the Natus National Historic Park. And the second item that I was able to on a major level to move around the country in terms of traveling is called Forks of the Road, America's domestic hub of the domestic enslavement traffic. And this was the hub at Natus, the Forks of the Road. And that exhibit has been on display here at Natus since 2018, and it's still showing in the visitor center of the parks. It has traveled, made its debut at Purdue University and Lafayette, and it's traveled to the Northeast Illinois and Southeast Illinois University and other places before it came home. Thank you, Sir Boxley. Oh, I forget one. Well, it's hard to see the deepest south. That's a particular book by the great writer, Kent Carter's name right at the moment. Richard Grant. And it catalogs a narrative and talks about the culture of Natus, of the underbelly culture of Natus. And it has my person, I was proud to see that particular image just to post an elderly lady in Natus that owns one of those antebellum homes. And so that's what I see. I don't know if there's another component to the slide. But that book is available, and it has an impact on the social aspect of Natus that a lot of the people resented in denying. But Richard Grant brings things home from the underbelly from the truth. And I'm pleased that he was able to produce this book and honor that he had me as his dust cover. Thank you, Sir Boxley. Our next site that will be more in depth is the Abyssinian Meeting House with Deborah. So the first photo that we put up that I'm offering is a photo that we think is dated back to 1912. And that is one that Mr. Shuttlesworth from the Maine Historic Society, Maine, the state of Maine Historic Society provided. And that was the photo that we started the hunt, if you will, for information about the building. The second photo reflects sighting that was taken off of the building when we started the restoration process back in the 1990s, around 97, 98. And a lot of the sighting had to be taken off of the building as we conducted a historic structures report trying to get more information on what we knew to be a historic building, but nobody had information on it, none, until the historic structures report was undertaken, commissioned, if you will. The third photo also reflects removing materials from the outside, the exterior of the building, if you will, trying to get at what the building used to be. What we discovered were windows that were much three to six windows that were on the building, were built into the building, and that we came to understand were placed in the original place. All of that was only done by commissioning the historic structures report. In the end, we did three historic structures reports and three archaeological digs. The next slide, please. So I don't know who from the network to freedom came to the building in, I want to say was 1910. Diane, I don't know if you were there when we introduced the structure to you were there. Yes, and I believe it was 2010. 2010, 2010. I'm showing my age because 19, you know, whatever, 2010, 20, it's all one year at this point for me. Anyway, the building since then has really gone through what complete restoration we still have the interior to do, but what you're seeing there is what the exterior looks like. I think we took that photo either last in the spring or last summer. And it had to be the spring because we just the doors on in the water and the windows that you saw in the earlier folks have are now in there to reflect the original side windows. There are three on the east and west side of the building and two in the front down on the main floor. There's a smaller window and two new doors. And I cite it like that because you know when you reach for those people that are listening who haven't gone through the process yet, but everything including the nails are people who did the building. The first time we saw a presentation of the things that they were finding in close of nails who at them. They really didn't quite appreciate or understand how sickness square headed nails were, but I ended up giving those square headed nails to major donors as as an opportunity for them to have a piece of the Abyssinian everything counts the windows the doors the siding the clapboards. So when you look at those clapboards there we did those clapboards. I think four years ago. And they now need to be redone again before the whole preservation project is completed. So you're getting a glimpse of the Abyssinian meeting house as it stands now. And the inside that's the top floor you see there are two floors that you can see if you look at the building and the interior are what you see in the original floors that we've stripped down and though the lighting isn't very good. Part of the the wood has been replaced because it just wasn't safe anymore. It will all be restored sometime in the next two years and the interior again you see a couple of the windows as they are new. And the third side to the on the roof the ceiling I'm sorry looking up at the ceiling the roof was replaced using money from the Barack Obama administration. And that was really the beginning of the restoration effort from our perspective. And so the big conversation with people is do you the roof or do you leave it like that. We tried I tried to tell everybody things are looking up. We are in the gotten significant funding from I'm trying to think of what they call it from from our Congress people the government just approved. Well they proved it at the beginning of the year. We just got two thumbs up that we were selected as an organization that's going to receive $1.7 million from the federal government. It's a very big deal with community community funding grant otherwise known for those of you that are older as set asides. But that's not what the Biden administration calls it. But that's we're very blessed to have just been made aware that the money is moving forward and I just was in a meeting last week to better understand what the grant looks like. As I said, Senator King came into the building couple Senator Collins was in there back in March. And so we have the full support of our congressional bill to finally bring this over the finish line. And that I'll stop because I'm sure you'll have more questions that will cover some of what I could say now. Thank you Deborah. Our last site that will go into deeper context is New Philadelphia, New Philadelphia with Professor McQuarter. Again, thank you. This slide shows free Lucy and free Frank as the founders. What's important here is that Frank McWhorter was a slave in Kentucky who hired out and was a very enterprising person who was able to mine salt Peter and actually owned land as a slave. And he was able to use that to get enough money to purchase his wife in 1817 in Pulaski County, Kentucky. And because she was pregnant with their next child, they wanted that child to be born free. In the end, Frank and Lucy ended up having the money to purchase 16 family members out of slavery, bringing most of them to Illinois. When they suddenly moved Illinois in 1830 and then founded the town in 1836 that is legally established the town in 1836. Frank then went on to network with people at the state legislature in Illinois to get a law passed in 1837 that established and legally established the name McWhorter. Now most people think of the name McWhorter with an H in it Frank took the H out so that the name McWhorter without an H would be his name. And that nobody from Kentucky that is the family that had owned him whose name was McWhorter with an H could take that land. So that's one story that the founders of the second story is when in 1837 when the Illinois state legislature passed that law, Abraham Lincoln was there and participated. And so in Illinois, we have a program called looking for Lincoln, all the places that identify Abraham Lincoln's activities. And so in the looking for we found Lincoln in relationship to free Frank, and therefore a sign established by the looking for Lincoln commission exists now in Barry Illinois, identifying the story that connects Frank McWhorter and Abraham Lincoln. Another aspect is that Frank's son Solomon was a very enterprising person. Frank went back to Kentucky and purchased him out of slavery when Solomon was 20 years old. And we have family oral history that demonstrates the conversation that Frank had with Solomon when he was bringing him back to Illinois describing freedom and what his role would be in the family as a free person. Solomon was very enterprising. He was an inventor. And he got the first patent of an African American in Illinois and was one of the fifth or sixth African Americans in the entire country to get a patent. He got a patent on making a sorghum into a sweetener. The abolitionist movement did not want to use bloodstained sugar from the south. And so sorghum became the sweetener of choice by the abolitionist movement and Solomon was very important in that whole development. New Philadelphia has never not been known because the families that live in the area had maintained their own oral history back to New Philadelphia. It was an integrated town, blacks and whites. In fact, there were more whites than blacks, but there was a substantial number of black people and it was a station on the Underground Railroad. So one of the first, of course, the newspapers back in the 19th century and early 20th century had articles about the town and the activities. But the first actual publication that we know of was in 1964, Grace Madsen published for the Pike County Historical Society an account of New Philadelphia. There was another book published by Helen McWhorter Simpson, and then my cousin, my first cousin Juliet Walker, did a doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago under John O. Franklin and published a book with the University of Kentucky Press in 1983. And my wife and I have published a book on New Philadelphia in 2018. The real work that's been done on New Philadelphia, next slide please, is by the New Philadelphia Association that was formed in 1998. The overall significance of New Philadelphia is that almost every way black people could get free, people did it in New Philadelphia and we call that the seven ways to freedom. They worked free, they were freedom seekers coming through there, they bought themselves out of slavery, they legally established a town, they helped others get to Canada and get north. They fought, their descendants fought in the Civil War, and they lived free 20 miles from slavery, that is from Missouri and the Mississippi River. These were people who were in an abolitionist village committed to freedom. And this is an example of the historic recognition of the town as I mentioned before. The lower right hand, you see a bust of Free Frank that is now on exhibit at the Abraham Lincoln Museum Library in Springfield, Illinois. And another replica of it is at the Smithsonian, New Smithsonian African American Museum, which was done by, again, a descendant of Free Frank from Cleveland, Ohio. Thank you. Thank you, Professor McWhorter. For the public, if they'd like to learn more, these are some sites that they can visit to read up on these sites that we have just learned about. So we're going to move into a few of our discussion questions. The question is, how did the local officials in the community react to learning about this new significance or interpretation of the site? We had 100% support from the beginning of the community locally in Portland and our congressional delegation nationally. It was overwhelmingly appreciated. The difficulty was in bringing people to better understand that it was a historic building to just explaining the process involved in historic preservation and restoration was a challenge I had. We had originally, way back 25 years ago, we had many, many people throughout the state, when I say many, 15 to 20 board members. We've dwindled down now to seven to nine as the challenges of raising money overtook a lot of what the board couldn't do. Yeah, we had a great deal of support. I think that the better ways for me would be to answer your question and then we can get into a bigger discussion, I think, as we move forward, unless you need me to say more. That's perfect and we can get more into the things you're talking about, maybe in some of the questions. Thank you, Debra. Professor McWhorter, what are your thoughts? Yes, well, it's very interesting because the New Philadelphia was never not remembered and therefore people always knew about it. But of course what happened is, after the New Philadelphia Association was formed in 1998, then subsequently academics, archaeologists in fact got involved. And there was a National Science Foundation grant that enabled 25 or so students to come to participate in an archaeological dig. That of course brought great attention to the project. And it also brought money into the economy, into local economy. And that's a very important part of this project that we think of it as a cultural heritage tourism. And so that really was started by the archaeological project, which of course also gave it a scholarly framework in which to extend the story. But from the very beginning, we had major newspaper editors, we had county commissioners, we had local city officials of Barrie, all involved. And so they, in small town America, there is a great economic crisis. And we also know that the freedom story is not necessarily embraced by everybody in this country. But the economic value and people who live close to New Philadelphia and have family connections to the Abarishness story is what has kept New Philadelphia as a positive point of reference for Pike County in general. Thank you for that Professor McWhorter. That's very interesting to learn about. Sir Boxley, the question is, how did the local officials in the community react to learning about this new significance or interpretation of the site? All right, thank you. The local official, how did the local, I'll say in this case, the local officials are really the national historic park, being a federal government agency. My intention was to concentrate on the enabling legislation of the Natchez National Historic Park, which says that it has to represent all. The local official in this case would be the city of Natchez, the state Mississippi Department of Archives and History, as well as your congressional delegation and the Natchez National Historic Park. The Natchez National Historic Park had an issue about jurisdiction because the Fox of the Roadside laid outside of their enabling legislation established park. But nevertheless, they embraced it because I was advocating at the federal level, at the federal agency. And one of the first thing they did was to have a pictorial exhibit on the site of the Merrill's history site here that they own. And it talks about the Fox of the Road and they put a brochure together. The city government was very reluctant to embrace the subject of slavery as much as the tourism agencies had a prolific tourism industry going on. And the S-word was not something that they were interested in per se. It took a while to make dent in the tourism industry. The Mississippi Department of Archives at the state level embraced the incident or the history of the site because it was undeniable in the way that I had been able to present it in the way the history. That's still available at Stant History presented it. So the Mississippi Department of Archives and History almost immediately began to work on with my assistants, working on a national landmark, the various components that the federal government had for recognizing historical sites. The local Archives and History person, Jim Barnett, is his name, began to give designation to the site as code into what the Archives and History could do and also make applications by 1999. This is from 1995 to 1999, make application for historical landmark designation. At the federal level of U.S. congressmen, the congressmen for the fourth congressional, it was then the fourth congressional district began to make appeals to the National Park Service to look into the situation. So in a real sense, we had because of the way that I approached this, that is trying to circumvent the local people as much as possible, the local government as much as possible, trying to circumvent them knowing that I could have more success or that I could agitate at the federal level and maybe have some success, which has proven out. By and large, the general public and African American community would show up at the various activities that we will be conducting at the Forks of the Road to try to continue advocating to the public what the history is about. Not the established African American community. When I mean established, I did not go into the ones that were already social organizations and ministers and whatever you would call the establishment of the African American community. I circumvented them again using the tactics that were learned from training from the Saul Alenski organization that taught you how to do organizing in the community and various tactics of either you go through the establishment or you go outside of the establishment and work with the masses of the people. And that's essentially what I began to do. And just everyday people from the community began to embrace this whole idea. They didn't know about it. People participated in the various activities they would show up like you would see when I showed you the play Flavor Me Freedom. So it took a while to get the local city, really the city did not come into this event, into this embrace the situation until about 2001 when the state of Mississippi had passed legislation to make funding available for the preservation of African American sites. And a one-time grant was granted to the city of Natchez to buy land at the Forks of the Road, to buy the historical sites at the Forks of the Road. So in general, that's basically the reaction. We had good reaction from everyday people, resistant from the local politicians at the city level in the beginning, even resistant from owners of the sites at the Forks of the Road in the early days in the beginning. And then a lukewarm reception from the local National Park Service office and again some interest from the state archives and history and support from the congressional district. And then by the time the 1998 when the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom was instituted, that's when I was really put on board to, and that's probably embraced this effort that we were making here to make the site known and preserving what have you. My question is geared towards how has the Network to Freedom's focus on flight and resistance helped you amplify the importance of chattel slavery and the Underground Railroad. Oh, okay. If it wasn't for, we'll go back to this, to this point. There were many years that I belong to and I still do a spiritual group that would have retreats, annual retreats nationwide in the Prince William Park and in Virginia there. And coming to that retreat, I would make it an apartment to go to the National Office of the National Park Service. And that's where I would lobby and complain about the need for the local park to begin to tell a story the local National Park Service to begin to tell and fulfill its enabling legislation obligation of telling the whole story. And in that sense, I was referred to the new program called the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program as a best place for me to lay my complaints and to take the issue of the Forks of the Road recognition preservation. And that's what I did in the early days when the Network to Freedom program was beginning its move. I embraced them and they embraced me. The whole team of people, all the different regions and those personalities, Diane Miller, Robert Tiger, Jim Hill, Guy Washington, and on. Those were the team of people that responded to my particular effort to try to get the Forks of the Road recognized and the very first national recognition of the Forks of the Road came from the Network to Freedom when I submitted an application through the city of Natchez for the recognition of the Forks of the Road to be in the Network program site by submitting an ad that showed an enslaved person named Wash who was the property of the dealer from St. Louis, Joseph Big. Joseph Big had an ad in the newspaper for Wash Escapes on the Forks of the Road and that qualified the site to become part of the Network to Freedom program site. And from that particular time on, we were able to at the local level have the participation of the Network to Freedom helping us with the very first grant for traveling exhibit that I talked about the African-European roots at the Underground Railroad for a small grant to do research to go into the newspaper from Memphis to the Gulf of Mexico and that particular project was called Proving the Mississippi River, a major Uhuru Freedom Route from the Memphis to the Gulf of Mexico. And that entails going into the archives, the old newspaper and everywhere else that I could find records about shallow slavery in the South and references to the Forks of the Road. And that produced 1100 pages of just enslaved history seeking freedom and along the Mississippi River from Memphis to the Gulf of Mexico. And of course, as the effort in the advocacy and the production of visuals and testimonies and narratives and the involvement by the U.S. Congressmen, U.S. Senators of the study for the site to become a part of the local national historic park. All of those things began to emanate out of the relationship with the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program, including the last major exhibit that I did in 19 and 2012 called the Forks of the Road Enslaved Market of the American Domestic Enslaved Trafficking, a hub here in Natchez, Mississippi. And of course, we continue to work now with the local national park services called the Natchez National Historic Park. And when I tried to say the National Park Service, that's what I really mean, the local National Park Service. We are really tied together now, whether I'm an advocate or a preservationist or a program production help consultant about the history of what I have. All of that is now cemented and with the purchase of the first site with the grant that was given to the city of Natchez to buy property and hold for the National Park Service. This gives us the flow and the long-term history from 1998 to present with the Network to Freedom program. I'd like to emphasize that my effort for trying to emphasize in the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom had to do with my concept of the massive, millions of enslaved people that were forced brought from the Upper Old South down to the Lower South and sold through the Forks of the Road is what I call the Overground Railroad, the forced migration on the Overground Railroad to the south. There had to be a migration and forced migration of the enslaved people to the Deep South before they could be run away on the, or freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad. That was my legitimate argument for them to continue to deal with the subject of slavery and not necessary what do you call those houses, wayside houses for freedom and more stories about escapes and running through the forest or what have you. All of those kinds of escapes happened but they didn't go necessary north. They went west, they went south, they went east, back to where enslaved people had originally been captured and brought from. And then some did go north and then also some went outside of the United States borders and what have you. So the subject of freedom seeking is what really cemented and galvanized the history of terror slavery from my standpoint in the Forks of the Road region and throughout the south and beyond. Okay. Thank you, Sir Broxley. That was perfect. Deborah, I wanted to touch back. You mentioned things about funding and these board members and things they could not do. Could you elaborate on that as well as maybe touch a little bit more on your challenges of after you started the committee and starting to restore the Abyssinian meeting house. So, yes, everything about the restoration effort from our perspective has been about raising money to restore the building. We've not really been able for the most part to tackle programming, although in 2013 I went to an exhibit at Brown University where they Brown University had created the slave injustice. And they did it out of raw space and somebody spent, and it was that inspiration that allowed us to think about programming, even though the building was being restored. And so while we were able to exhibit things like slides that our architects or drawings that our architects had created for us in terms of what the future building would look like, the restored building would look like, we were able to use that. Believe it or not, I have my sister who is currently serving as the president of the board uses a phrase that we love to use now. It's her language. I love to use it as much as she does. And that is that the building is the artifact. But when you come into the Abyssinian, Diana's been there and for others who may be listening, who have been there, know that just coming into that space, you begin to understand and appreciate what it was like for people in 1837 to have created this rather large structure. And from that, we've been able to believe it or not raise money when people come in. We are able to raise money at one point. Portland has a first Friday art feature where all the artists and museums and whatnot are able to open their space and people come through and we did that a couple of years ago before the pandemic, and that opportunity allowed us to meet folks who could be considered major fundraisers and who were really able to help us put our feet on solid ground in terms of better operating as a nonprofit. Two or three minutes is just not enough time for me to go into funding except to say that it is all about the fundraising and being able to have undertaken the necessary historic structures reports back in 2020, I think we did that in 2002 and three and four, allowed us to then begin to better understand what was needed for historic structures, restoration, preservation, if you will. What is your target fundraising goal? Well, it was back in the very beginning. It was 1.2 to 1.5 million dollars. This year, when we were able to apply for the federal money, the goal was to come in order to complete the project. It was going to be roughly 1.5 million again. So that meant it would have been a total of 3 million back in the day. If we had known that, then I don't think I would have undertaken. Boy, we ended up doing it. But because, you know, prices go up. And sadly, right now, when we applied for the grant last year, the federal money, the money has gone up significantly more. I like to tell everybody because of the ship stuck in the middle of the ocean, you know, all of this impacts the restoration effort, the cost of gas people were having to hire to work for us. It's all related. And that's the thing about undertaking a new restoration project, people, a preservation project. And there is a difference. And that's why I go back and forth because I have to always remind myself what I'm talking about. In our case, it's preservation. People need to understand the cost constantly fluctuate. And depending on where you are, if you're hiring consultants, it'll go up and down depending on... I like to tell people if they're needing to build a house today or tomorrow, I suggest. But we all know how consultants can be. I was one once. And, you know, the construction people, I was going to send you photos of our guy who all those bricks that you see alongside the lower part of the building. When you go back and look at the slides, all of those are hand literally taken out and installed again. And we had to buy a certain brick. And so he started out with one and we had to take those all out and put another one in. Clapboards, we started out with one. Everything has just been an incredible learning experience. And so I was listening to the man before me and how exciting it must be that you were able to start with your... Though you had to acquire the land and do all the things you had to do, but to be able to get into your programming. Well, people have actually taken the information that we've researched and gleaned and started their own nonprofits. They've taken our work and started their own nonprofits because it's taken us so long to get to where we are today. So it'll be another two years. But as Senator King said to me, it must be exciting to know that hopefully the money that we have been able to identify for you will get you to the finish line. And I believe that that will be the case. Talk to us in two years, but I think that's going to be the case. I prefer to answer your questions because I could talk just on this one question for a half hour. I get that, Deborah, and I wish we had more time. Professor McWhorter, I wanted to give you a chance to answer either question or bring up any other challenges that you encountered when trying to make New Philadelphia a national landmark or these other nominations that you spoke about. One of the great challenges is to gather together all of the facts that we have, and there's always a limited number of facts, dealing certainly with the 19th century, and putting together a narrative. And so every time we have new information, we then have to change the narrative, not the basic narrative, but adding in, it's like adding in more pixels to a picture. So that's a big issue. But we have a website, and the network to freedom was very important historically in acknowledging the importance of oral history, because we have to remember that freedom seeking was not a public event. It was a secret event. And so we have to rely on whatever evidence we can find, including oral history. But we have a website that contains a lot of information. For example, every June, we have all the likes lecture series. So there's a series of four lectures that people give that are online, and you can go and you can see the videos on our website. We also have in the fall the free frank freedom day that just started the first one was last year and this current one this September and I frankly I'm giving the talk. So you can come in here and we talk again. But also a unique feature of our site is that we have an augmented reality feature. So there are several sites on the trail through New Philadelphia where you can not only access avatars that tell the story in cyberspace but against the background of the actual location. So this is a new innovation that we had and it's an important feature. But the real gift of the network to freedom is that more people are coming to our site. And that's really important to be part of this network to freedom. And another point I want to make about New Philadelphia and I think this applies to most of our sites around the country is that it's not only about people who lived in New Philadelphia, but it's about all the freedom seekers that came through New Philadelphia. So it's it's it's not only my story as the great great grandson of the founder. It's our story of freedom seeking and of freedom so that New Philadelphia represents that agency of African Americans themselves. That's really the most important aspect of the freedom narrative that really applies to many other people it applies to women it applies to all nationalities. People seek freedom for their own future and that adds to the overall of all of our futures. So I want to thank you very much for including New Philadelphia and we really love the network to freedom. Thank you Professor McWhorter and we're glad to have you. The final question I have for each of you is what is your vision on where you would like the site to go. And we can start with you Professor McWhorter. Well, of course, as I mentioned earlier, New Philadelphia has passed two congressional committees. It's past the congressional committee in the House. It's past the congressional committee in the Senate. And we look forward to full votes to bring New Philadelphia as part of the National Park system. That's really the main goal we have right now. We've had a fundraising activity. We're at the six-figure level, not at the seven-figure level, but we've acquired most of the land. And so we're getting ready for that National Park status. Thank you. So Sir Boxley, the last question is what is your vision for forks of the road? First of all, I have a commemorative t-shirt for the success of bringing the forks of the road into the National Park service. And it's going to go to two or three hundred people as a thank you for all of the different folks who helped me do this over the years. Now, the vision that I have is to be able to take the narrative and the concepts away from this just being a local event at Natchez to its national significance, which means that we need national help to work with the local National Park and such. And it's partly my fault for not emphasizing it great enough that this is a national significance. This component here in Natchez is just part of the national story. And it has to be told on that way. Now, there are lots of help right now with a number of books that have been written about the internal domestic and flamen trafficking of America. There are a concept of people working on their ideas such as Edward Ball who did the slavery tears story. I think for the Smiths Only magazine, they're looking at a national trail from Franklin and Onfield site in Maryland. I mean, Virginia, all the way down to the forks of the road and New Orleans. Those upper south sites who were bringing forth bringing our ancestors on the overground railroad to their destination selling sites in the south. Don't really mention other than just the location, New Orleans, Natchez or whatever. And we have to have each site on each end showing the occurrences that happen on each end and would have in terms of the national significance. And that's what I would like to have this this forks of the roads development accomplished. And of course, certainly all of the details, as people say the nuts and bolts of child slavery, you know, the human denial, the human activity, etc, etc. That's what I envision you're being able to get when you come to the Natchez National Historic Park. Thank you, Sir Boxley. And I thank each one of you for your time and the conversation that we had today. I think it's very enlightening. And we thank the audience as well for listening and look forward to any questions. Thank you.