Art Wilson said he can’t number the people he has seen moved to tears or simply walk away from an exhibit on the Underground Railroad at the Jacksonville African American History Museum because they were overcome with emotions.
“When I see people experiencing through tears and stuff, I see them identifying with what we go through, and I also see them identifying with their own loss of not knowing this (story),” said Wilson, the museum’s founding executive director. “We have people in Jacksonville who didn’t know (the Underground Railroad) was here and we advertise all the time.
“Unless people are interested in something like that, they don’t encourage themselves to go look for it.”
Now Wilson and others who have championed the cause of telling the story of the Underground Railroad, a series of safe places where abolitionists sheltered runaway slaves or “freedom seekers,” are about to get a boost.
The Illinois Underground Railroad Task Force, created through a bill last year, met for the first time a couple of weeks ago to begin implementing a strategy to better tell the movement’s story by connecting projects and places with an end goal of bolstering tourism in the state.