April 3 Talk to Cover Guilford County and the Underground Railroad

Beginning March 31, Guilford College will present “Greensboro and the Underground Railroad,” a week-long series of events as part of the city’s Bicentennial Celebration. All events are free and open to the public; call 316-2264 for more information.

Monday, March 31: “Crossing the Danger Zone: Flight on the Underground Railroad,” a talk by Jerry Gore and Peggy Overby of Freedom Time, located in Maysville, Ky.; Hege Library’s Art Gallery, 8 p.m. Sponsored by the Bicentennial Commission and the Office of the Academic Dean.

A descendant of fugitive slaves, Gore is a founding member of the National Underground Railroad Museum, Inc., and founder of the Kentucky Underground Railroad Association. A member of the advisory boards for the Kentucky Underground Railroad and the International Underground Railroad Association, he has served as a consultant on the history of the Underground Railroad throughout the United States.

Wednesday, April 2: Underground Railroad Walking Tour of the Guilford College Woods, led by Max Carter, director of Friends Center and coordinator of campus ministry; starting at The Hut, 1:30-3 p.m.

Wednesday, April 2: “Stealing a Little Freedom: Runaway Slaves in Guilford County,” the Rembert W. Patrick Memorial Lecture, by Freddie Parker of N.C. Central University; Dana Auditorium Moon Room, 7:30 p.m. Sponsored by the Guilford College history department and the Bicentennial Commission.

Parker is currently professor and chair of the history department at N.C. Central University. He is the author of two books on slavery in North Carolina, Running for Freedom: Slave Runaways in North Carolina, 1775-1840 and Stealing a Little Freedom: Advertisements for Runaway Slaves in North Carolina, 1791-1840, as well as numerous book reviews for the North Carolina Historical Review.

Thursday, April 3: “Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America,” a talk by author Fergus Bordewich, moderated by Millicent Brown, associate professor of history at N.C. A&T University; Greensboro Public Library, 7 p.m. Co-sponsored by the Greensboro Public Library, Guilford College, the Greensboro Historical Museum, Inc., the North Carolina Humanities Council and the Greensboro Bicentennial Commission.

Bordewich is the author of Killing the White Man’s Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century; My Mother’s Ghost, a memoir; and Cathay: A Journey in Search of Old China. His articles on American history have appeared in Smithsonian and American Heritage. As a journalist, he has also traveled widely in Asia, the Middle East and Europe, and has written on human rights and other issues for The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Readers Digest and other periodicals.

April 3, 2008