US Department of Education Resources

…f color to escape to freedom. From Slavery to Freedom at the Senator John Heinz History Center features a new 3,200 square foot long-term exhibition, an anthology The Civil War in Pennsylvania: The African American Experience (Heinz History Center, 2013), groundbreaking research displayed in the exhibit and online microsite, scholarly lectures at the museum or through our partnership with the Center for African American Urban Studies and the Econ…

Crisis Decade (1850 – 1860)

…Wright. She spent two days at Lewis Tappan’s home, where his wife Sarah used $63 from the Weems Ransom Fund to buy Ann Maria new clothes, so she could discard the boys clothing she had used to escape. On November 30, she traveled by train to Canada with Amos Freeman, pastor of Brooklyn’s Siloam Presbyterian Church. When they finally reached Dresden, Ontario, where her aunt lived, Freeman witnessed what he described as a “very affecting” reunion…

Abolitionist Brooklyn (1828 – 1849)

…ng economic depression that ended Brooklyn’s rapid growth. Reduced property prices enticed black New Yorkers to buy land. In doing so they confronted an 1821 amendment to New York State’s constitution which introduced a $250 property requirement for black men to vote while removing all qualifications for white men. Owning property became a political tool that allowed black men to be counted as full citizens with voting rights. The result was the…