Underground Railroad: Road to Freedom

Filmmaker Julia Reed's discovery of a "station" of the Underground Railroad in her Vermont town led to this middling program that examines slavery and provides some history of the exemplary network that helped free hundreds of slaves before the Civil War. Background spirituals, period pictures, and recollections are interwoven throughout this low-budget, student-made production that touches on the African slave trade (and horrible conditions for “cargo”), auction blocks, efforts to keep slaves uneducated, and the routes and heroes (including Harriet Tubman) of the Underground Railroad. However, the main focus is on old houses in Vermont where current residents of former Underground Railroad stations show off crumbling hiding places and passages. More regional than its title implies, this somewhat scattershot production is not a necessary purchase. Underground Railroad (VL-9/99) or Harriet Tubman (reviewed in this issue) would be better and less expensive choices. Aud: I, J, H. (J. Williams)