by Charles L. Blockson

The grandson of an escaped slave, historian Blockson has compiled and edited 47 first-person accounts of blacks who stole their way to freedom via the harrowing stratagems and hidden routes generically called the underground railroad. Few of the accounts will be new to students of the rich lode of ex-slaves' narratives; but Blockson brings to bear years of work as the curator of Temple University's Afro-American Collection and his earlier mapping of routes in a National Geographic article. His focus on the emotion and uncertainty of escape makes this work a handy primer on the pain, daring, and drama of the slaves' flight. For Afro-American and antebellum collections.