Pontiac — The Oakland County Coalition of Historians is working to nominate Oak Hill Cemetery in Pontiac, believed to contain the unmarked graves of at least eight freedom seekers and early abolitionists, for the Underground Railroad National Park. Network for Freedom.
The network honors, preserves and promotes the history of resistance to slavery and protects sites with verified connections to the Underground Railroad. National Park Service. There are currently over 700 listings in 39 states, Washington DC and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Five Oakland County communities — Southfield, Birmingham, Royal Oak, Pontiac and Farmington — received grant funding from the Michigan Humanities Council in 2022 to uncover the untold history of the Underground Railroad, according to Oakland County Parks Historian Carol Bakaku Egbo.
Pontiac was the center of her research, which led to the discovery of eight freedom seekers and early abolitionists buried in unmarked graves in Oak Hill Cemetery on University Drive.
Pontiac was a vital part of Oakland County’s Underground Railroad network, Bakaku Egbo said.
The Oakland County Anti-Slavery Society was founded in the 1830s, and anti-slavery societies and churches in Michigan also joined the network to provide support to freedom seekers traveling to and from Canada, Bakaku Egbo said. Freedom seekers — slaves who took action to gain their freedom — often traveled north to Canada, settled as free citizens, and then returned to the U.S., said Dave Decker, chairman of the Oakland County Historical Commission.
Decker’s work on the Oakland County Underground Railroad grant project has produced a significant amount of research. He and Bakaku Egbo are now part of a working group on the cemetery designation, which Decker said needs to weave the research into a story that highlights the cemetery’s ties to the mid-19th century Underground Railroad movement.
“We need to be prepared to tell the story in a way that’s easy for the public to understand,” Decker said. “How did they get here? How did the Underground Railroad operate in Oakland County? And why did Oak Hill become their final resting place?”
Decker believes there is a good chance they will be accepted into the network, and the application deadline is January 2025. The Pontiac City Council unanimously passed a resolution in May to allow the city cemetery to apply to join the National Underground Railroad for Freedom Network. Meeting minutes.
“Oak Hill Cemetery represents a sacred place that has a tangible connection to the history of Pontiac and the state of Michigan in terms of freedom seekers, the abolitionist movement and the anti-slavery community,” said Pontiac City Council President Mike McGuinness. “It’s been so many generations ago that there aren’t many sites or landmarks left or people still living there, so we want to make that connection and tell that story in a way that’s still relevant and tangible.”
Decker said historians now have access to historical records for Oak Hill Cemetery, but because it was secret and illegal, documents about specific Underground Railroad sites and locations can be hard to find.
Much of Bakaku Egbo’s research focuses on people involved in escapes, but Decker said finding them can be difficult because fearing capture, many freedom-seekers were reluctant to document their escapes, at least until they had achieved freedom.
“Their story has been forgotten in a way. I learned about them through the newspapers,” Bakaku Egbo said of Oak Hill’s freedom fighters and abolitionists. “We look at Oakland County and Pontiac history too much as the history of African Americans in the Great Migration from the South between 1910 and 1960, but we have a story that goes back much further than that.”
The National Park Service is seeking documentation and evidence proving the Freedom Network’s facilities’ ties to the Underground Railroad, which historians say could range from historical newspapers and other sources to records at Oak Hill Cemetery itself.
“We also use information from plantations where slaves may have been found, and often we go back and look to see if there are birth records,” Decker said. “Because of the work we did with the Underground Railroad project, we have access to a lot of research and documentation.”
For Bakaku Egbo, adding the cemetery to the Network for Freedom is the first step in marking the graves of Mary Parker, Martha Jackson Parker, David Jackson, George Newman, Harriet Washington, John and Sarah Anderson and John Jones.
“To me, this story is so rich and so forgotten, and the only way to tell this story is through Oak Hill, because it’s all there,” she said. “To be honest, for a long time, historians weren’t really interested in African-American history in general or the Underground Railroad. … When it started to surface, people mostly focused on white abolitionists because documents are better evidence. I’m interested in freedom seekers.”
Bakaku Egbo said their stories have been ignored for too long and it is time to be more inclusive in telling history.
“We can’t go back and fix things, but we can be more inclusive and go back and find the stories that have been ignored,” Bakaku Egbo said. “Now we can tell those stories.”
Decker said more talent may be found as the project moves forward.
“We know that there are a number of people who were Black, formerly enslaved people buried in the cemetery within that time period,” Decker said, “generally from the early 1800s through 1863.”
Currently, there are four Network for Freedom locations in Oakland County: the burial sites of abolitionist Elijah S. Fish and freedom seeker George B. Taylor in Greenwood Cemetery in Birmingham, the burial site of abolitionist Nathan Power in the Quaker Cemetery in Farmington, and the burial site of freedom seekers Henry and Elizabeth Hamer in Royal Oak Cemetery.
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