Who Will Reopen the Underground Railroad?

Searching for Today’s Abolitionists

Once upon a time people sacrificed for their beliefs. Quakers love to talk about abolitionists. In Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, we often lift up Benjamin Lay, Lucretia Mott, and John Woolman. They are our faith heroes, our Avengers. I have heard their stories since childhood. Now I am searching for our modern-day abolitionists.

The U.S. government is carrying out all kinds of horrors right now, both here and abroad. I cannot watch the genocide in Gaza, and I cannot bear to watch what is happening at the border or in detention centers.

In Germany in the 1930s, the Nazis based many of their segregation laws on American Jim Crow laws. But Jim Crow was more than just laws, with white Americans burning African Americans alive in town squares as a public spectacle. The Nazis began with their political opponents—the Communists and Socialists—who were jailed or disappeared. Next, the regime targeted LGBTQIA+ and disabled communities. Then came the Roma and other nonwhite groups. Soon, Germany became homogeneous. But what was the point of the forced expulsions, imprisonments, and murders? The Jews were always the point—but the German people had to be desensitized first.

In the United States today, we see chilling parallels. This regime has begun its attack on two fronts: the LGBTQIA+ community and immigrant communities. We are told this is about protecting families and borders. We are told it is about religious freedom, crime, and jobs. We are told we need concentration camps to keep Americans safe, and bathroom bills to keep children safe. Now the administration is questioning birthright citizenship. Whose citizenship do you think they mean?

My mother was born on a plantation in the U.S. South. She had no birth certificate. What is the point of all this? It has always been about Black Americans. We were always the point. I knew it in 2015 when I first heard the slogan “Make America Great Again.” I knew immediately when and how America was supposedly “great”—when lynching was legal and segregation was the norm.

At a recent session of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, I asked our general secretary if the yearly meeting ever had funds to help enslaved Americans flee and relocate to the North or to Canada. I was told we only had funds to educate free Black Americans. That led me to wonder about other yearly meetings. I reached out to New York, New England, and Indiana Yearly Meetings, asking if they had 200-year-old funds that had been used to help African Americans.

Many Black Americans I know believe we may have to flee this country before the regime goes further—before our rights are stripped away and we cannot vote, own property, or get passports because we are no longer considered citizens. I do not want to stand at the border in a scene out of The Handmaid’s Tale. I am a regular, working-class American. My job does not translate to other countries, and I only speak English. I do not want to be a refugee. Maybe this is my American privilege, but I want to support my family with some basic comforts. I want to protect my daughter’s reproductive rights and still have access to healthcare for myself.

I am searching for today’s abolitionists. Are American Quakers up to the challenge? Can we form an Underground Railroad 2.0? I am meeting with Friends and forming a clearness committee. I am trying to navigate this new reality. I do not want to live as my parents and grandparents did, losing everything our family has worked for and accomplished over the last 250 years. This is my country—but it is increasingly clear that it does not want me or anyone who looks like me.

Will the new Mason–Dixon line be blue states and red states, states run by Democrat and Republican politicians? Will there be another Great Migration—and this time, will it be international? What does our faith lead us to do in these trying times?

My faith tells me to help as many people as I can, however I can. My faith is leading me to search for funds and to look in new directions. My faith tells me that together we can stand in the Light against tyranny. My faith knows that LGBTQIA+ people, immigrants, and Black Americans are all one in God’s eyes.