[Music] Danielle and I are thrilled to be speaking with Judy Sweets, an historian and researcher from Lawrence, Kansas.

And I'm telling you, Judy, it's a delight.

You have been doing research for 15 years.

If you could please tell us briefly what is the Underground Railroad and why did you get interested in it?

Okay.

Well, the Underground Railroad is not really a railroad.

That's... just they used railroad terms for getting freedom seekers moved along the path north to freedom because during the 1850s and even before people were enslaved and on plantations and abolitionists, you know, wanted to help move them and actually they themselves wanted to sometimes escape on their own from some of the plantations.

So abolitionists started underground railroad stations either in their house, a barn or loft cellar, all kinds of places.

They used railroad terms, for example, the the freedom seekers, is what we call the escaped slaves theyre the freedom seekers.

And they they used terms like station for where, you know, might be a barn.

They call that the station kind of like railroad station.

Depot is when somebody had charge of a whole group of stations.

We had around 30 here in Douglas County and let's see what else passengers station master and then anyway, there there just lots.

And then for Canada they would use the word Canaan and they had code words that you had to say when you're knocking at the door, you know, bringing someone to the next station, they'd usually knock on the door and said, Who's there?

And they'd say, A friend with friends.

And Canaan, does that referred to Canaan Land.

Is that the reference I'm thinking of?

It might be.

I'm not exactly sure where that term comes from.

I think it's probably biblical.

Talk about the connection to Canada, because I don't think I'd ever heard about that until seeing the research that you've done.

Yes.

During the 1850s and even earlier, people were really not free.

I mean, if they wanted to get on the Underground Railroad, I mean, the slave catchers were everywhere and they were, you know, captured in them.

And then they'd get money back.

They'd get $200 back for every slave that they would take back to the the slave holder.

Theyd come out of Kansas and they'd come through from Missouri, mainly.

The Missouri slaves would come over to Kansas.

They heard about Lawrence and that was a free state town.

Some of them went to Iowa and there were Quakers up there that that had underground railroad stations, and they kept them for a while.

But the only really safe place before the Civil War was Canada.

They'd take them up through Detroit and go across Windsor, Canada, [Music]