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In April 2002, 73 year old Joan Southgate stepped off from the small town of Ripley, Ohio. With a simple goal: She wanted to highlight the courage, creativity and strength of the slave families and conductor families involved in one of America's first civil right movements: The Underground Railroad. She walked 519 miles across Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Canada to honor all those whose stories were never captured and documented in that time of secret, illegal and dangerous organizing. Using email journals and school visits she taught the lessons of this historic collaboration of free blacks, free whites, Native American Indians and freedom seekers. From school children to community groups, bank presidents to truck driver her inspiring story and message of heroism and hope has resonated over the miles. The walking has stopped but her mission continues.

Joan Southgate is a retired social worker and community organizer. She won Ragdale Foundation's 1996 Francis Shaw Fellowship, completed a memoir called Bout Time and published a chapbook, A Book About Time. Restore Cleveland Hope, the grass roots organization she founded in 2003, is currently developing an Underground Railroad Teaching Center to be housed in the last pre-civil War home still standing in University Circle, Cleveland, Ohio.

Email: gonnawalk439@hotmail.com