William Still (1821-1902), a conductor on the Underground Railroad who helped nearly 800 enslaved African Americans to freedom.
A new biography of William Still, Father of the Underground Railroad
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Scott LaMar
William Still (1821-1902), a conductor on the Underground Railroad who helped nearly 800 enslaved African Americans to freedom.
Airdate: November 04, 2022
Pennsylvania was one of the first and most important stops on the Underground Railroad that helped enslaved people escape to freedom. Philadelphia in particular was at the center of assisting African-Americans to flee from bondage and find new lives for themselves.
Philadelphian William Still was at the center of it all. History may not remember Still as much as Harriet Tubman, for example, but at the time, Still was someone who was instrumental in directing enslaved people to freedom and civil rights afterwards.
A new book chronicles the life of Still. It’s called Vigilance The Life of William Still — Father of the Underground Railroad.
The book’s author Andrew Diemer appeared on The Spark Friday and talked about Still,”He’s the most important figure on the most important portion of the Underground Railroad in probably its critical period, the 1850s.”
Still isn’t as well known today as Harriet Tubman, who traveled into the slave-holding south to help enslaved people escape, but Diemer said Still was a key person in the Underground Railroad at the time,”I think we have this understanding of the Underground Railroad as this secretive, clandestine endeavor. And it was to a certain extent, certainly someone like Harriet Tubman had to operate in secret. But once you get into a place like Philadelphia, Still is recognized even at the time as the guy who’s at the center of this network, he is selectively releasing stories. He obviously has to conceal certain details. But, you know, he publishes in newspapers stories about the Underground Railroad while it’s going on. He is the public face. He’s important for raising money. It’s important for making sure that fugitives know that he’s the guy to come to. When I call him the father of the Underground Railroad, I make it clear that he’s a father. I mean, he is not the creator of the Underground Railroad. I think more than anyone else, he is the one who nurtures and organizes this this thing.”
In the book, Diemer tells the incredible story of Still meeting his brother, who was traveling through Philadelphia,”The scene is that Still is sitting in his office in 1850, going about his normal work, maintaining his correspondence. This is the anti-slavery office in Philadelphia. And in walks a man who’s a stranger to Still who has come to Philadelphia looking to reconnect with family he had lost when he was a small boy. So he had been sold as a slave south, separated from his parents, and eventually had been able to acquire his freedom. And he came north to Philadelphia looking for his family, even though he knew very little about them. So Still dutifully begins to take his information and the man tells him his parents’ names and begins to tell him the circumstances of being separated from them. And it all of a sudden Still realizes, this is his own brother, that his brother, who he had never met, because Still was born years after his parents have been separated from them, was the man who had come into his office and sitting and was sitting across from him.”
