Author’s Note: February is Black History Month, a time to recognize the achievements, resilience, and lasting contributions of Black Americans. This article is part of a series examining how national Black history intersected with local communities in western Washtenaw County.
For generations, stories have circulated in Scio Township and Dexter about hidden rooms, nighttime riders, and freedom seekers moving quietly north. For many years, those stories were treated carefully, shared, but rarely declared as fact.
The Underground Railroad was a loosely organized, secret network of people, routes, and safe houses that helped enslaved African Americans escape to freedom, operating primarily from the early 1800s through the Civil War, until slavery was abolished in 1865…