Vigilance: The Life of William Still, Father of the Underground Railroad

Diemer (history, Towson Univ.; The Politics of Black Citizenship) demonstrates that William Still (1821–1902), born free in New Jersey to parents who had been enslaved, played a remarkable role in grassroots efforts to aid and protect those fleeing from bondage and to secure the rights promised by true emancipation. Still’s 800-page tome The Underground Railroad (1872) remains a classic account of escaping from slavery. But this is more than a biography of Still. Diemer also develops a larger story about Philadelphia’s dynamic Black community. He features the everyday work that organized and empowered Black freedom fighters. As Still did, Diemer emphasizes that Black people worked to save themselves. He shows how fugitives themselves drove the enterprise that engaged hundreds of communities stretching to the U.S. border with Canada, as Black families and others opened their arms, pockets, and homes. He establishes the ideological and political significance of antebellum and postbellum events as Black people battled white prejudice in the North and endured tensions within their own communities over means and methods to succeed.