Running on Faith: Freedom Seeker Stories as Recorded by William Still, Father of the Underground Railroad

Running on Faith: Freedom Seeker Stories is a fully staged performance created to honor the history of the Underground Railroad and the Juneteenth holiday. The play tells three unique stories depicted in William Still’s book, The Underground Railroad, of slaves fighting to escape bondage by traveling the Underground Railroad. The trials, dangers, and desperation of escapees are told by three women closely tied to William Still. Still was a publisher, historian, and successful businessman, acknowledged as the father of the Underground Railroad, and credited with coining the phrase because of its vast cross-country network. The stories are told by his oldest daughter, Caroline Still Wiley Anderson, a dear family friend, Frances Watkins Haper, and freedom fighter, Harriet Tubman. William Still documented stories told to him directly or by letters from escaped slaves, other abolitionists, or slave fugitives on the run. The goal was to have a record of individuals traveling the Underground Railroad as a means by which families separated by slave auctions might be able to find one another and be reunited as free men and women.