MAC’s Underground Railroad Trolley Tour Now Part of National Park Service’s ‘Network to Freedom’

CAPE MAY – The Center for Community Arts (CCA) is proud and excited to announce that its trolley tour, “The Underground Railroad in Cape May” (UGRR), has been accepted as part of the National Park Service’s Network to Freedom. The Network is a national program that documents, preserves, commemorates and educates the public about the people, places and sites throughout the country connected with the Underground Railroad.
The Park Service extensively vetted the materials used by CCA to support the stories and information about people and places in Cape May connected with the UGRR.
As part of the Network to Freedom the trolley tour will appear on the National Park Service website, and the Network to Freedom logo will appear in tour announcements. CCA will also collaborate with other members of the Network.
“We are thrilled to be a part of the Park Service’s effort to educate Americans about the great civil rights movement of the 19th century, and to show Cape May’s role in that,” said CCA’s Barbara Dreyfuss, who led the research and wrote the tour. “And we applaud the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts and Humanities (MAC), which co-sponsors the tour, for using the script for a PowerPoint presentation, to bring this same information to schools, community centers and other venues.
“We are proud to have our work substantiated by the Park Service,” said CCA Director David Mackenzie. “The tour builds on 20 years of looking into the history of the African-American community in Cape May by members of CCA’s community history group. It rounds out its work, building an archive of African-American history in Cape May that includes photos, oral histories and documents, which are used for exhibits.”
“We at MAC were very impressed by the fascinating Underground Railroad material unearthed by CCA researchers,” said MAC Director Michael Zuckerman. “We are delighted to integrate it into our trolley tour line-up. Our decision has now been validated twice over — by the public, which has flocked to it beyond all expectations, and by the critical reviewers at the National Park Service.”
On the tour visitors learn little known facts about Cape May’s role in the Underground Railroad. Cape May was the place where many freedom seekers from slave states across the Delaware Bay first touched free soil.
Wealthy businessman and UGRR leader Stephen Smith summered for decades in Cape May. Once enslaved himself, he risked all he had to ferry people to freedom in his railroad cars. In Cape May, Harriet Tubman earned money for her freedom runs to the Eastern Shore. And the citywas home to a community of free blacks who helped freedom seekers on their way further north.
Regular tours are conducted from June through September, periodically during the spring and fall, and by appointment. Call (609) 884-7525 for more information about CCA. For tour reservations call (609) 884-5404.