Through Darkness to Light

February 20, 2017
In the foreword to this photo collection, civil rights activist Andrew Young writes, “The Underground Railroad has been described as the first civil rights movement... because it blurred racial, gender, religious, and socioeconomic lines and united people... in the common cause of ending the injustice of slavery.” This long photographic essay by photographer Michna-Bales documents the sites that made up the network’s route north and is intended to “illuminate the darkened corners” of this episode in American history. Historians estimate that in the six decades preceding the Civil War, more than 75,000 freedom seekers passed through the Underground Railroad’s stations, but this remarkable movement has slipped into the “realm of myth and quaint folktale,” notes historian Fergus Bordewich in an essay describing the historical facts of the journey. Sadly, many of the 80-plus photographs, which were taken at night in hopes of capturing the “mystery and foreboding” that the runaways must have felt on their journey north, lack visual interest due to the darkness in which they were shot and their presentation on the page. Color photos.

October 1, 2017

This title is not a history of the Underground Railroad, that network of people, routes, and safe houses used by runaway slaves to reach freedom in the Northern United States and Canada in the years before the Civil War. For excellent chronicles on that subject, consider Fergus M. Bordewich's Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America, or Eric Foner's Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad. Instead, this is a creative and imaginative project that uses the medium of photography to show how the journey might have appeared to those in route. Photographer Michna-Bales bases her project on research conducted in archives rich with materials on the Railroad, including those of the Indiana Historical Society. She scouted locations around Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, and Michigan. Conveying the darkness of nighttime in photos is not easy to do; readers' eyes must adjust to the inky depths of these images, suggesting the daunting quest so many experienced. VERDICT An inventive, heartfelt, and worthy contribution to literature about the Underground Railroad.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.