Chicago in Focus | Dr. Larry McClellan and the Underground Railroad - Regenstein Library

Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Chicago and Northeastern Illinois
Join us to hear from Dr. Larry McClellan, historian and author, who will discuss the history of freedom seekers and the Underground Railroad in Illinois.
We’ll gather at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library (Room 122). The event will also be available virtually. It is free to attend and open to the public.
Dr. McClellan’s award award-winning book, Onward to Chicago: Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Northeastern Illinois (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2023), will be available for sale at the event.
About the Book: WINNER, 2023 Underground Railroad Free Press Hortense Simmons Memorial Prize for the Advancement of Knowledge!
Uncovering stories of the freedom network in northeastern Illinois
Decades before the Civil War, Illinois's status as a free state beckoned enslaved people, particularly those in Kentucky and Missouri, to cross porous river borders and travel toward new lives. While traditional histories of the Underground Railroad in Illinois start in 1839, and focus largely on the romanticized tales of white men, Larry A. McClellan reframes the story, not only introducing readers to earlier freedom seekers, but also illustrating that those who bravely aided them were Black and white, men and women. McClellan features dozens of individuals who made dangerous journeys to reach freedom as well as residents in Chicago and across northeastern Illinois who made a deliberate choice to break the law to help.
Onward to Chicago charts the evolution of the northeastern Illinois freedom network and shows how, despite its small Black community, Chicago emerged as a point of refuge. The 1848 completion of the I & M Canal and later the Chicago to Detroit train system created more opportunities for Black men, women, and children to escape slavery. From eluding authorities to confronting kidnapping bands working out of St. Louis and southern Illinois, these stories of valor are inherently personal. Through deep research into local sources, McClellan presents the engrossing, entwined journeys of freedom seekers and the activists in Chicagoland who supported them.
McClellan includes specific freedom seeker journey stories and introduces Black and white activists who provided aid in a range of communities along particular routes. This narrative highlights how significant biracial collaboration led to friendships as Black and white abolitionists worked together to provide support for freedom seekers traveling through the area and ultimately to combat slavery in the United States.
About the Author: After graduate work at the University of Chicago, Dr. Larry McClellan helped create Governors State University south of Chicago in 1970 and served with the University for 30 years. He is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Community Studies. In the mid-70s, he was mayor of University Park (then Park Forest South). He spent four years as a senior consultant with the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission, and throughout his career, served as pastor with diverse congregations.
His consulting, research and writing focus on freedom seekers and the Underground Railroad, and on African American and regional history south of Chicago. Major publications include 25 articles in the Encyclopedia of Chicago [2005]; The Underground Railroad South of Chicago [2019], co-author of To the River, The RemarkableJourney of Caroline Quarlls, a Freedom Seeker on the Underground Railroad [2019]. Onward to Chicago: Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Northeastern Illinois was published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2023. This received the national 2023 Memorial Prize for the Advancement of Knowledge from the Underground Railroad Free Press. In 2022 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Illinois State Historical Society for his contributions to Illinois history and, in 2024, they gave his latest book their Award for Superior Achievement.
Larry has spoken at five Illinois state history conferences and three national conferences of the National Park Service Network to Freedom program. He was the principal researcher for listings on the NPS Network to Freedom national register of Underground Railroad sites in Crete, Lockport, and Chicago. Some of his work will be found at illinoisundergroundrailroad.info.
For ten years, he wrote a monthly regional history column for The Southtown/Star newspapers. Larry graduated from Occidental College in Los Angeles, with a year at the University of Ghana in West Africa, and additional studies in Great Britain and Jerusalem. He has served on the boards of the Illinois State Historical Society and the Will County Historical Society and has given lectures and programs across Illinois. Currently he is President of the Little Calumet River Underground Railroad Project and serves on the Illinois Underground Railroad Task Force.