Monroe County Historical Association

Following the luncheon and a brief business meeting, Temple University professor Dr. Nilgün Anadolu-Okur will present a program on “Pride, Prejudice, and Dissent: Freedom Calling on the Underground Railroad.”

Dr. Anadolu-Okur, professor and graduate director of Africology and African American Studies, will discuss the Underground Railroad, a loosely connected network intended to get enslaved people to freedom from the 1830s to 1860s.

As she explains, the Underground Railroad harbored more enemies than sympathizers. For the passengers, danger was imminent, and secrecy was crucial. Traitors, villains, kidnappers, and bounty hunters roamed neighboring counties in rural and urban Pennsylvania.

Dr. Anadolu-Okur’s slide-illustrated lecture narrates the untold, and lesser-known facts about pride and prejudice on the Underground Railroad. To this day, epic journeys by heroes and heroines — from Harriet Tubman to William Still – are considered the most heroic collective act of defiance in America through the collaboration of both Black and White freedom fighters.

Several individuals, including Frederick Douglass, John Brown and Lucretia Mott, dared to take nation’s destiny into their own hands, and helped enslaved people flee from bondage for the promise of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.