Methodology

Bound for Glory’s primary scholarly ambition is to reexamine the regional Underground Railroad’s history by focusing on the understudied geographical and infrastructural contexts that shaped the experiences of freedom-seekers. As the public manifestation of the project’s scholarly ambitions, the website encourages readers to reassess the way “freedom,” “escape,” and “home” have been conceptualized in public education and popular discourse. The website traces stories through the midwest as they converge on Detroit, and it gives much needed attention to the perils that arose at geographic encounters with rivers, lakes, and swamplands, as well as the challenges posed by the infrastructure of roads, rails, canals, telegraph lines, and shipping lanes. By emphasizing the spatial, environmental, and technological obstacles that characterized travel for self-emancipated people, the website urges its readers to dispense with simplistic accounts of enslavement, emancipation, and migration, while rooting their new understanding in the geographic contours of Midwestern American history. Bound for Glory not only serves as a repository for local history, but as a platform for ongoing student engagement and publication.