wfn.org | New Sojourner Truth training center preserves history

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

April 18, 2002  News media contact: Linda Green7(615)742-54707Nashville,
Tenn.  10-31-71BP{172}

NOTE: Photographs are available with this report.

By Kathy Goolian*

ADRIAN, Mich. (UMNS) -- Adrian College is introducing a state-of-the-art
facility that uses modern technology to preserve the history of Michigan's
Underground Railroad. The Sojourner Truth Technical Training Center is the
first of its kind in the country.

Both Michigan and the United Methodist Church have strong connections with
the Underground Railroad - the channel by which slaves escaped from the
South and were secretly transported to Canada during the 19th century. Many
Methodists were involved in the Underground Railroad.

One slave who escaped from Tennessee, Jermain Loguen, later became a bishop
of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

Probably the most famous "engineer" of the Underground Railroad was Harriet
Tubman, a Zion Methodist. She helped about 300 slaves escape by making some
19 trips into the South. 

In Lenawee County, Michigan, Laura Haviland is remembered for running the
Underground Railroad station at Adrian. She housed runaway slaves in her
home, at one point taking six slaves to safety in Canada. She briefly
belonged to the Methodist Episcopal Church. The slavery issue split the
Michigan Methodist Episcopal Church, so she joined the Wesleyan Methodists.
A statue of Haviland stands before city hall in Adrian.

Visitors to the Sojourner Truth Center are learning how to use the most
advanced technology available to document the Underground Railroad network
of people, places, and artifacts. The center's training program will allow
researchers, scholars and historians to digitize their historical
information and post it on the Web.

"The Sojourner Truth Technical Training Center is the culmination of a
three-year project," says Professor Kimberly Davis, director of the center.

"Three years ago, the state of Michigan funded a pilot project to develop a
multi-relational database on the Underground Railroad," she says. "When I
started, it was going to be a model for Lenawee County.

"As we demonstrated what we had done at conferences nationwide, a wider
interest developed," Davis says. "There had not been one of this type ever
done in the U.S. We moved toward providing a database for the state of
Michigan."

The technical training center was started last November, she says. "Its
primary purpose is to teach individuals how to use the technology to
document Underground Railroad sites and people with artifacts in the state
of Michigan."

The center is located in Dean Hall on the campus of the United
Methodist-related college. 

"Adrian College is a partner in this project," Davis says. "We have a
combination of partnerships that reflects the whole Underground Railroad as
a network."

The school itself was founded by an outspoken abolitionist, Asa Mahan, she
notes. 

The training center is a collaboration between Adrian College, the Sojourner
Truth Institute of Battle Creek and Heritage Battle Creek Research Center,
and the International Network to Freedom Association, based in Washington.
Other funding sources include the Lenawee County NAACP.

Some of the Adrian College staff will be participating, and work-study
students will work in the center as Freedom Scholars.

"We held our first training symposium in January," Davis says. "It involved
20 individuals who went through hands-on training using the labs at Adrian
College: how to use the database, how to use digital cameras, how to use
scanners."

Davis has been on Adrian's faculty since 1994 and is chairperson of the
school's Political Science Department. "I have an interest in the
Underground Railroad, and the home I live in was used as a site as well,"
she says.

"The opportunity to request funding for a project from the state of Michigan
Historical Center arose," she says. "The big problem is preservation and
dissemination of information on history, and (determining) how we can serve
Michigan in closing the loop on this process."

Davis says she's happy to see the way things have come together for the
creation of the center, "which will serve the state and provide access
nationwide."

# # #

*Goolian is a staff reporter with the Michigan Christian Advocate, the
newspaper of the United Methodist Church's Michigan Area. This story
originally appeared in that newspaper.

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United Methodist News Service
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