Professor Maria Esther Hammack of Ohio State University and author of the upcoming book, Channels of Liberation: Freedom Fighters in the Age of Abolition, will be giving the African American Experience in Missouri lecture at the State Historical Society of Missouri on Oct. 1 at 6:30 p.m. titled, “Asking the Way to Mexico: Engineering Freedom from Missouri to Mexico.”
For the presentation, Hammack will explore the story of Roda, a 19-year-old Black woman who fled her enslaver in Missouri in 1855. Instead of taking the Underground Railroad to the northern free states, she made her way to the southern border of Mexico, a country that refused to sign a treaty for the extradition of formerly enslaved persons who crossed the border to Mexico.
Dr. Hammack is a Mexican scholar and public historian whose work explores the intertwined histories of liberation and abolition across the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Her upcoming book, Channels of Liberation: Freedom Fighters in the Age of Abolition, reimagines the Underground Railroad by expanding the stories, timelines, and geographies of Black freedom. Centering the experiences of Black Americans—especially women—who left the United States to seek freedom in Mexico, Hammack’s work offers a bold new perspective on North American history.
The event is free and open to the public. A reception will be held at 6 p.m. with the lecture at 6:30 p.m. October 1. Co-sponsors of Hammack’s lecture are University of Missouri History Department, Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, and the State Historical Society of Missouri.