BUFFALO, NY (WKBW) -- It's considered one of the most important routes on the "road to freedom" in African American history and it weaved its way right through Western New York. It was called the Underground Railroad.
"It's a great foundation for so many things, it's a great foundation for education, for informing people of our history that is not only local, or national, but international. We play an important part," Denise Easterling of the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Area Commission told Eyewitness News.
On Thursday evening, Niagara University held an event celebrating the importance of the Underground Railroad and honoring one of its best known "conductors", Harriet Tubman.
"She really epitomized what Americans hold dear and that is the struggle for freedom, equality, justice, and self-determination," said keynote speaker Dr. Kate Clifford Larson.
Dr. Larson is the author of "Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero". She says it was here in Western New York that Tubman received the support she needed to lead so many slaves to freedom.
"She traveled through here frequently on her rescue missions to bring people from the eastern shore mostly family and fiends that she liberated. She found a very supportive abolitionist community here Black and White in Central and Western New York," said Larson.
Retired Syracuse history professor Milt Sernett agrees.
"We have to re-imagine the landscape as uncluttered with all the contemporary buildings. But her route to freedom because a great deal of her time was spent in Canada in St. Catherine's," said Sernett.
Between 1850 and 1860 it's believed Tubman conducted more than a dozen rescue missions leading close to a hundred people to freedom. Dr. Larson says those mission would not have been possible without the countless people who helped her along the underground railroad.
"It gave her hope every time that she came through here she was filled with hope and it gave her the energy and the fortitude to go back and rescue more people," said Larson.
Tubman continued her fight for freedom until her death at the age of 91 in Auburn, New York.
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