February is Black History Month. This is a time for the national annual observance for remembrance of important people and events in the history of the African diaspora. In honor of this special time, you can stay at Caesars Windsor any Sunday through Friday in February and receive 25% off! Valid February 1st - February 29th.Promotion Code: HISTORY1. Use this 4 Diamond property as a base for your explorations of the Underground Railroad sites of Southwestern Ontario.  READ MORE.

The Underground Railroad is neither a railroad nor is it underground. It is the name of the network of people who hid and guided slaves and refugees as they followed the North Star to Canada – to freedom.

One of the most dramatic protests in the history of the United States resulted from the enslavement of millions of Africans by southern slaveholders. From 1440 to the late 1800s, millions of Black Africans were shipped under primitive conditions to the Americas to service the sugar plantation industry. Less than 15 million survived the middle passage and because of harsh living conditions and extreme cruelty in their new homeland, many more died from disease and exhaustion. Thus began their quest for freedom – the international clandestine uprising which has come to be known as the Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad movement originated in the southern United States and wound its way to the less restricted North and eventually stretched to Canada. Here, as in Mexico and the Caribbean, Blacks could live as free citizens.

The most intriguing feature of the Underground Railroad was its seeming lack of formal organization. First established by sympathetic abolitionists – black and white – who hid and guided freedom seekers as early as the 1500s, it reached its peak between 1780 and 1865. The system succeeded because of the ultimate cooperation and trust among various religious and ethnic groups who moved bondsmen towards the North Star – as Canada came to be known – through a highly secretive network. And though most slaves were denied an education, they successfully developed an elaborate code which guided thousands to freedom in the North.

So cloaked in secrecy was this conduit that very few facts were ever recorded. However, historians believe that over time some 40,000 freedom seekers made it to Canada via the Underground Railroad. They came here because in 1793 Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe introduced a precedent-setting bill to prevent the further importation of slaves into Upper Canada (Ontario) as more and more Empire Loyalists – black and white – came north out of loyalty to Britain.

Ultimately, a substantial population of free citizens (black and white) established itself in Upper Canada. When peace and civil rights returned to the United States in 1865, many of the black refugees returned south to reconnect with family and friends.

Follow our region’s Underground Railroad as it traces the perilous path of the 19th century Blacks as they fled to the sanctuary of the North along the silent and secret tracks of the famous Underground Railroad. It is a journey you won’t soon forget.  READ MORE