Footsteps to Freedom tour group
Footsteps to Freedom Underground Railroad Study Tours, an organization that started as an educational initiative of the Black Voice Foundation and Black Voice News, returned to Maysville this week for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic.
The late Jerry Gore, educator, and historian, was involved in the tour’s beginning. Gore was also a founding member of the National Underground Railroad Museum, Inc. and founder of the Freedom Time Company and the Kentucky Underground Railroad Association.
The study tour follows the steps of the Underground Railroad and lasts eight days, expanding across 3,000 miles between Kentucky and Canada, before going to New York where the group will fly home.
According to retired Mason County Judge-Executive James “Buddy” Gallenstein, who helps coordinate the tours now in place of Gore, this is their second tour in Mason County this year and they will be doing three more tours in July.
During the tour, the group will also visit the Rankin House and the Parker House, both in Ripley, Ohio, as well as many museums and other historical sites associated with slavery and the path to freedom.
These educators use the knowledge they gain from the tours as a teaching tool that helps them to understand the plight of the enslaved Africans and then teach their students, Gallenstein said.
“In Old Washington, they tour the old courthouse and see a reenactment of the slave auctions; then they go over to May’s Lick and see General (Charles) Young’s cabin,” said Gallenstein.
The cabin was the birthplace of Charles Young; he was the first black military attache, the third African-American graduate of the U.S. Military Academy; the first black U.S. national park superintendent and a highly accomplished linguist.
The tours have hosted thousands of educators over more than two decades; accentuating and broadening their knowledge and understanding of African-American history.
