Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander at Prince Books

Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander

Virginia Waterways and the Underground Railroad

 Book Signing & Presentation

Saturday, February 3, 2018

3:00 PM

Enslaved Virginians sought freedom from the time they were first brought to the Jamestown colony in 1619. Acts of self-emancipation were aided by Virginia’s waterways, which became part of the network of the Underground Railroad in the years before the Civil War. Watermen willing to help escaped slaves made eighteenth-century Norfolk a haven for freedom seekers. Historian Cassandra Newby-Alexander narrates the ways that enslaved people used Virginia’s waterways to achieve humanity’s dream of freedom.

Cassandra Newby-Alexander currently serves as a professor of history and the director of the Joseph Jenkins Roberts Center for the African Diaspora at Norfolk State University. She has spearheaded the 1619 Making of America conference, which seeks to transform the narrative about the role of early Africans in the evolution of America. Her books include An African American History of the Civil War in Hampton Roads and Hampton Roads: Remembering Our Schools and Voices from within the Veil: African Americans and the Experience of Democracy.