october 2026 Edition
On Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026, the Alexandria Community Remembrance Project will hold our first Discerning Dinner (tickets are available here) - a simple meal and conversation about the Underground Railroad with Anthony Michael Cohen. More than two decades ago, after retracing the 19th century route Harriet Tubman took to freedom, Cohen published The Underground Railroad: A Personal Journey Through History. Then, this summer, Cohen led a pilgrimage along the same path from Maryland to Canada on the 250th Anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence. Since Cohen’s visit is nearly here, we decided to explore the history of the Underground Railroad and Alexandria’s connection to it.
The Mysterious Underground Railroad
Swathed in secrecy, a literal Underground network that moved enslaved people from the south to free states and/or Canada has proved difficult for historians to pin down. While reality points to tens of thousands successfully reaching freedom, a lack of documents have left historians with little to go on. That is true in Alexandria as well.
We can’t point to hiding spots with certainty, but we know people were concealed and helped, usually by free Black Alexandrians and occasionally by other enslaved people. We know this because of “runaway” ads placed in the Alexandria Gazette and because some Black Alexandrians were punished for helping people escape. Yet rumors persist, even in some tourist publications that mismark the Lloyd House as a stop on the underground railroad. (1)
For some reason, Americans yearn for a geographical place to visit. Perhaps they want to look at a building, a barn, an alleyway and imagine good people helping vulnerable people out of the brutal economic system that drove white people to enslave Black people. If that is true, it misses the point entirely. The significance of the Underground Railroad (UGRR) story is that individuals mustered the courage to defy their enslavers and strike out for freedom. Since before the country was established, Black people resisted, ran from and fought slavery. The personal accounts of freedom seekers are the history of the UGRR.
The Constitution recognized slavery and set up penalties for those who would help freedom seekers. After its ratification the law of the nation became a tool to keep Black people enslaved. Southern state laws piggybacked onto federal adding penalties and punishments. Then, in 1850, Congress prioritized Fugitive Slave legislation empowering Southern governments to force federal officials and Northern citizens to return fugitives to chains and deny runaways a jury trial or the right to testify on their own behalf. Few were brave enough to defy the law (most who did were Black). For these reasons, documentation of people and places was avoided, leaving behind only rumor and legend. (2)
However, two men, one in Philadelphia, William Still, a free Black man and the other in New York City, Sydney Howard Gay, a white abolitionist, recorded the accounts of hundreds of people who fled enslavement. In the 1850s, at least seventeen people profiled in one or both of their records originated in Alexandria, Va.
The focus of any study of the Underground Railroad should be on the people, not the locations where they hid along their journey. Still knew this, that is why in 1872, he shared the harrowing experiences of hundreds who came through Philadelphia on their way to freedom in The Underground Railroad Records Narrating the Hardships, Hairbreadth Escapes, and Death Struggles of Slaves in Their Efforts for Freedom. His account centered the fugitives' stories because he feared Americans were beginning to forget the horrors that drove the nation to war.
Click to continue reading the feature story online....
Upcoming Events
Discerning Dinner Conversation on the Underground Railroad with Anthony Cohen
Thurs. Nov. 5
6-8:30 p.m.
The Lloyd House, 220 N. Washington Street
Tickets $40
Please join us for our first Discerning Dinner to raise money for ACRP’s Memorial Scholarship Program. Our featured guest, Anthony Cohen traveled almost 1,000 miles and mimicked as closely as possible the various routes and methods Freedom Seekers employed, including mailing himself in a box from Pennsylvania to New York. He engaged boats, horses and buggies when possible and walked, and walked. This past summer, he led a pilgrimage on a similar 750 mile journey to Canada to celebrate the 250th Anniversary of American Independence. Please join us for some simple food and a promising conversation.
Monday Robinson: A Life of Thorns and Roses
October 22-December 31
Freedom House Museum
1315 Duke Street
A new exhibit at Freedom House shares the complicated story of Monday Robinson who was born in 1778 and stretches through many Virginia counties, including Alexandria. Robinson’s story encompassed enslavement, freedom, and later, the enslavement of members of his own family as a means of protection. Disputed freedom in his will led his brother, the administrator, to work to free nine of Monday’s children and grandchildren who then had to leave Frederick County. Several became Alexandrians, there are also family members connected to Alexandria’s Contraband and Freedmen Cemetery Memorial which led genealogist Char McCargo Bah to uncover new branches of the family tree. In Bah’s words, “the Robinson family can date its ancestry back over 250 years in Virginia and have the honor of being a 250th Anniversary family.”
In The News
The New York Times Editorial Board on Oct. 15 showed in The Vanishing Black Caucus how recent Republican gerrymandering is impacting Black representation in Congress. Due to the recent Supreme Court decision allowing the extreme redistricting in GOP controlled states Black representation is expected to fall by nearly a third - far lower than the number of Black Americans.
In early September, a group of Congress members sent a letter to the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation demanding an investigation into a number of incidents across the nation where Black people have been found hanging in trees. Referencing the Emmett Till Antilynching Act of 2022 that made lynching a federal crime and requires the DOJ and FBI to investigate suspicious deaths. Since then, the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project has released a statement supporting Congress request for an investigation. Read it here.
Upcoming Committee Meetings
The Committee of Inquiry will meet Mon. Nov. 9 at 7 p.m. at Alexandria Black History Museum.
Past Committee Meetings
The Alexandria Community Remembrance Project Steering Committee met on Oct. 14 at 5:30 p.m. at the Alexandria Black History Museum. An announcement was made that ACRP’s marker for Joseph McCoy and Benjamin Thomas has been accepted by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources; committee updates were heard and a discussion was held about fundraising for the endowment for the Memorial Scholarship Program.
The Committee of Inquiry met on Oct. 13 at 7 p.m. at Alexandria Black History Museum. Chair Jean Kelleher gave a presentation on the evolution of Virginia’s constitutions, there was also discussion of possible partnerships, as well as research updates.
Alexandria Community Remembrance Project
The Alexandria Community Remembrance Project (ACRP) is a city-wide initiative dedicated to helping Alexandria understand its history of racial terror hate crimes and to work toward creating a welcoming community bound by equity and inclusion.
In Memoriam
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Office of Historic Alexandria
City of Alexandria, Virginia
ACRP@alexandriava.gov