Recent recognition of Underground Railroad sites in Ohio reminds us how much of this history is still being uncovered. Counties such as Athens, Lawrence, Gallia, and Adams are now formally acknowledged through the National Park Service’s Network to Freedom program, bringing visibility to routes and safe havens long preserved in local memory but underrepresented in national narratives.
But Ohio’s history is not isolated. It is connected to a much larger story of courage.
Tubman’s work extended far beyond leading individuals northward. In 1863, during the Civil War, she became the first woman in U.S. history to lead an armed military expedition: the Combahee River Raid in South Carolina. Working alongside Union forces, Tubman guided gunboats through Confederate territory, using intelligence networks built among enslaved communities to free more than 750 men, women and children in a single night.
That extraordinary act of strategy and liberation is the focus of historian Dr. Edda Fields-Black’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book, Combee. This ground-breaking research documents Tubman’s mission beyond being conductor on the Underground Railroad, to her role as a military leader, intelligence strategist and a soldier in the fight for our collective freedom. The story of the Combahee River Raid reveals something essential: the struggle for liberation was coordinated, disciplined and deeply rooted in community networks.
Those same qualities defined Ohio’s Underground Railroad.
The men and women who operated stations in Ohio were not improvising isolated acts of kindness. They were participants in a system — one built on trust, secrecy and shared moral commitment. The courage seen along the Combahee River echoes the courage that flowed along the Ohio River.
One such site of courage stands in Springfield: the Gammon House.
Built in 1850 by George and Sarah Gammon, the Gammon House became a documented station in the Underground Railroad network. The Gammons were free Black citizens in a time when that status alone required vigilance and resilience. Their home was more than shelter; it was a sanctuary. Within its walls, freedom seekers found safety, food and protection as they continued their journey north.
Operating such a station was not symbolic. It was dangerous. The Fugitive Slave Act criminalized assistance to those escaping enslavement. Neighbors could inform. Property could be seized. Lives could be threatened. Yet George and Sarah Gammon chose courage over compliance.
Today, the Gammon House stands not merely as a preserved structure but as a living witness to that moral decision. It reminds us that resistance was not only organized in famous cities or along major rivers — it was sustained in homes, in families, in daily acts of conscience.
Last fall, Daughters of the Underground initiated a walk following the spirit of Tubman in Lowcountry, South Carolina. As part of our experience, we met and walked with Dr. Fields-Black on trails over the bridge and through the marshlands and waterways near where the Combahee River Raid unfolded. Walking the terrain, seeing the rice fields, understanding the complexity of landscape — the rise and fall of the tides, the dangers of the rice patties, the strategic timing to travel on a full moon night during the season’s most virulent disease environment — that Tubman and the U.S. soldiers navigated, knowing this history made the struggle for liberation tangible.
That journey deepened our understanding of what freedom required.
It also illuminated something we often forget: liberation movements are not abstract. They are rooted in land, water, geography, and require study, preparation and skill. Just as the tidal marshes shaped Tubman’s military strategy in South Carolina, the river crossings and wooded corridors of Ohio shaped the Underground Railroad’s northern routes.
Springfield is not peripheral to this story. Nor is Athens County. Nor are the countless towns in between. Each community was part of a wider network that bridged the South to the North, from bondage to freedom. The Underground Railroad was not a straight line; it was a web of human decisions — thousands of them — made at great personal risk.
In West African tradition, we are honored to serve as griots for the Gammon House Griot Series held on Saturday, March 12, from 2-4 p.m. at the Clark County Public Library in Springfield. This program will explore Ohio’s Underground Railroad networks, Tubman’s military leadership during the Combahee River Raid, and the scholarship of Dr. Fields-Black that reframes Tubman’s role in American history. It will also reflect on the Daughters of the Underground journey — an embodied act of remembrance linking Ohio to South Carolina, Appalachia to the Lowcountry, scholarship to lived terrain.
But this is not simply a history lecture. It is an invitation to remember our state not as a footnote, but as a central chapter in the larger story of liberation. Ohio’s Underground Railroad network participants were part of a moral revolution and served as threads in a vast tapestry of resistance.
So, let us claim this history — not as spectators, but as participants in memory. Let us celebrate the courage rooted in every county of Ohio and lift up the countless individuals, known and unknown, who defied injustice to help others reach freedom. In doing so, we honor not just the past — we inform the future.
Jim Embry is a “retired” Kentucky-based and life-long community activist, agrarian intellectual and oral historian whose work centers on food justice, land stewardship and cultural memory.
Jennifer Bailey, born in Troy, OH, and a graduate of Ohio State University, has dedicated her entire professional career to equity and social justice, focused on equal employment opportunity and civil rights.