Footsteps to Freedom 1999: Day Five

Update posted on Thu, Aug 19, 1999, at 2:32:02 PM Pacific Daylight Time.

Second Baptist Church
Detroit MI

Established in 1836, the Second Baptist Church of Detroit is the oldest church in the Midwest. It was founded by 11 men and 2 women who vowed freedom for Blacks: freedom from slavery, segregation, discrimination; free to be counted as persons, to be citizens of this country, to vote. The group was met in the church by Dr. Nathaniel Leach, who told us about the historical role of the church as an Underground Railroad Station which helped send between 5,000 and 6,000 fugitives to Canada. Later, on January 6, 1863, citizens of Detroit gathered at the church to hear a public reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.

"Let us discard all this quibbling about ... this race and that race and the other race being inferior ... and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are equal."

-- Abraham Lincoln

We were taken down into the basement to the "Harriet Tubman Waiting Room" and heard stories about those who followed the North Star in search of freedom, just 7 blocks away, across the river into Canada.

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