While the exhibit is hosted in Marshall, there are numerous programs to expand the area’s Underground Railroad story in the community. Take advantage of the wonderful opportunities noted below.

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Songs of the Illinois Freedom Road with Chris Vallillo

April 10, 2025, 6:30 PM, Marshall Public Library

Songs of the Illinois Freedom Road is the powerful new musical performance featuring the songs, stories, and struggles of the Illinois Underground Railroad.

The show features rare first-person accounts of freedom seekers who passed through Illinois. Highlighted stories include John and Mary Little, who traveled on foot 140 miles to Chicago, and George Burroughs, a black Canadian who worked on the Illinois Central Railroad where he helped smuggle escapees to freedom.

Vallillo extensively researched the subject using primary source documents such as the 1857 Slave Narratives of Canada and the WPA Slave Narratives as well as the most recent scholarship on the subject. Vallillo combines these powerful stories with eleven historic songs that were sung by the enslaved to inspire and share knowledge among themselves.

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Following the Drinking Gourd: Stories From Illinois’ Underground Railroad with Brian Fox Ellis

Thursday, May 1, 2025, 6:30 PM, Marshall Public Library

Travel with the intrepid men and women who risked their lives for their freedom. Meet the folks who violated the fugitive slave laws to honor a higher law about dignity and respect. Hear the stories of Owen and Elijah Lovejoy, Abraham Lincoln and Peter Cartwright. Sing the songs that will carry us to freedom in this interactive performance based on the oral histories of former slaves and conductors!

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North of Slavery: The Matson Slave Trial with Dr. Samuel Wheeler

Thursday, May 15. 2025, 6:30 PM, Marshall Public Library

In 1845 Kentucky slaveowner Robert Matson brought several of his slaves to Illinois, where he put them to work on his farm in Coles County. Two years later an enslaved woman named Jane Bryant fled the farm with her four children. Matson turned to the judicial system in Illinois, hiring attorney Abraham Lincoln to help him reclaim his human property. The ensuing freedom suit reveals the complexity of the institution of slavery, its implications for the “free state” of Illinois, and the role the institution played in the Civil War. The talk will examine the critical role the Illinois Supreme Court played in ensuring Illinois developed as a free state and explore why the future Great Emancipator was on the wrong side of history in this case.