The Meadowlands Commission is honoring Black History Month with a weekly post on this blog. Today the focus is on the Underground Railroad in Jersey City.  This series of four posts originally ran in 2009. That’s great thing about history — it never gets old.

Runaway slaves from the South took several routes through New Jersey before and during the Civil War, but those escape routes all had one thing in common: They converged at Jersey City.

By one estimate, as many as 70,000 runaway slaves escaped through Jersey City.

If you click on the map on the right (from the state of New Jersey’s Web site), you can see the major New Jersey stops on the Underground Railroad.

   More on Jersey City’s role in the Underground Railroad here.

    More about New Jersey’s role here.

   For a glimpse of slavery in late 18th Century Bergen County, click here.

And in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday tomorrow, here is a link to information on the Emancipation Proclamation.