The work of historians is often that of investigator, interviewer, detective, code breaker, decipherer, fact checker, and more. Piecing together the past without first-hand sources is like building a puzzle with several of the pieces missing.  On rare occasion, we are able to uncover a diary, document, or manifest that is a treasure trove of corroborated information. Such is a record of fugitive slaves written by Sydney Howard Gay.  Gay was an Underground Railroad operative in the 1840s, 50s, and 60s, and he kept a record of fugitive slaves that he and others helped to transport. Gay was a journalist, author, and abolitionist who was editor of the Anti-Slavery Standard, and later the Chicago Tribune, the New York Tribune and the New York Evening Post.

An undergraduate student at Columbia University unearthed Gay’s record several years ago, and it figures prominently in a new book by professor Eric Foner titled Gateway to Freedom: the Hidden History of the Underground Railroad.  Foner was tipped off about the discovery by Madeline Lewis, an undergraduate history major who occasionally tended to Foner’s family cocker spaniel. She had been looking at Gay’s papers, which are held at Columbia University, and she found a small notebook labeled Record of Fugitives.

How fitting on the celebration of the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. that Foner's book reminds readers of the abolitionists who helped shepherd people to freedom, and that the Underground Railroad was an interracial effort. Writes Foner, "It's actually something to bear in mind today when racial tensions can be rather strong: This was an example of black and white people working together in a common cause to promote the cause of liberty." 

Read the Wall Street Journal's review here.