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Interactive Map Explores the Legacy of the Anti-Slavery Movement Through Its Impact on Local Communities
LINCOLN UNIVERSITY, PA – Lincoln University has announced a partnership with AMERICAN EXPERIENCE on the Abolitionist Map of America, an interactive website that explores events, characters and locations connected to the anti-slavery movement, one of the the most important civil rights crusades in American history. An extension of the three-part series The Abolitionists, premiering Tuesdays, January 8-22, 2013 on PBS, the map engages communities around their local history, expanding upon the stories told inThe Abolitionists and connecting them to real geographic locations as well as integrating them into present-day America.
Lincoln University, the nation’s first historically Black degree-granting institution founded in 1854, joins dozens of museums, libraries, archives and PBS member stations in populating the map with geo-tagged historical photos and documents, as well as more than 30 video clips from The Abolitionists. Unique individuals are also invited to upload their own content with the goal of creating a map that reflects the shared history of the movement and its indelible mark on local communities and the nation.
“Two items (“Hosanna A.U.M.P. Church” and “Lincoln University”) have been pinned to the Abolitionist Map,” said Dr. Cheryl Renee Gooch, Dean of the School of Humanities and Graduate Studies who wrote both entries and is also writing interpretive histories of the Hosanna-Lincoln relationship. “As an Underground Railroad station, Hosanna Church helped slaves escape bondage.”
Equally significant is that some of Lincoln’s first students were also members of the 169-year-old church, which is adjacent to the campus, and played a role in the founding of the University, formerly Ashmun Institute. Hosanna Church trustees James Amos and Thomas Amos were Underground Railroad agents and the first students to enroll at and graduate from the University.
Dr. Gooch noted that “while the founders of Ashmun supported the emigration of Blacks to Africa as a gradual solution to the racial tension caused by slavery and opposed the abolitionist demand of the immediate and complete end of slavery, the two groups shared common humanitarian ideals: the spiritual and intellectual liberation and uplift of African Americans.”
View The Abolitionist Map of America
The Abolitionist Map of America will be available as an iPhone app in December 2012.
Lincoln University of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, founded in 1854 as the nation’s first historically Black degree-granting institution, combines the elements of a liberal arts and science-based undergraduate curriculum along with select graduate programs to meet the needs of those living in a highly-technological and global society. Today, the University enrolls a diverse student body of approximately 2,000 men and women. Internationally recognized for preparing and producing world class leaders such as Thurgood Marshall, the first African American U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Lillian Fishburne, the first African American woman promoted to Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy, Langston Hughes, the noted poet, Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana and Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first President of Nigeria.