Conversations abound on how to foster empathy among people in positions of power. Real empathy, not the performative kind or the fleeting kind that ebbs with the headlines. Educators play some of the most impactful roles in nurturing the next generations, and Underground Railroad tour group Footsteps to Freedom has found a way to immerse them in history and deliver an experience meant to educate and endure.
Throughout the summer, Footsteps to Freedom takes teachers and school administrators, most from Southern California school districts, on eight-day tours from Kentucky to Canada, retracing the steps taken by enslaved people seeking freedom. They don’t always hit the same cities, but Detroit, rich in abolitionist history and a settling point during the Great Migration, is always on the list. I joined them for much of their day here in late July.
The Detroit leg aptly began at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. In matching T-shirts, 50 or so participants lined up in a circle in The Wright’s Ford Freedom Rotunda, and then one of the guides — or “conductors” — led the group in a powerful rendition of “Amazing Grace” that echoed throughout the empty space. Historian, retired professor, and author Daniel E. Walker then led us through The Wright’s And Still We Rise exhibition, a permanent centerpiece that starts in ancient Africa and ends with the Civil Rights Movement. Walker taught at El Camino College and was a researcher at the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California.
“This trip is using lessons from the Underground Railroad to teach humanity,” says Walker, who has been leading tours for Footsteps to Freedom since it was founded 28 years ago by Cheryl and Hardy Brown Sr. He says the impact on participants of all races and backgrounds has been profound.
“The biggest thing they say is they feel like they were robbed and cheated with their education. They’re like, ‘I went to school, I have a master’s degree, and I never learned this.’” Thorough and engaging, Walker led the group through the exhibit, illustrating how the settling of early modern societies, the cultivation of sugar, relationships between nations, and the forging of Abrahamic religions all worked congruently to birth the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
By far the most moving part of the Wright tour happened when we, armed with a trigger warning from Walker, entered the belly of a slave ship. Hyperrealistic replicas of human beings lay flat, packed in and chained together, on shelves made of wooden planks. Walker explained that when the person above “vomited, urinated, defecated, and menstruated,” that all fell onto the enslaved person below them. He told us that when ships would arrive at port, they were often made to anchor not at the dock but farther out and unload their “cargo” little by little on smaller boats because the stench was so overwhelming.
Walking through the hold, several people started to cry; I clocked this while trying to manage the lump in my own throat. A couple more from the group had to take seats, and one woman had to be taken aside and comforted. Later on, in the brighter light and breezier atmosphere of the Detroit Riverwalk, I caught up with that woman, Brianna Mosely, a Black social worker for the Los Angeles Unified School District. As to why she’d become so emotional, she says, “It was just really rough, just knowing that people had to endure that and knowing that’s my history. When I see that, it gives me more courage and more empowerment. My ancestors did all of this just so I could be here today. I’m excited to go home and do something different.”
Kenneth B. Morris Jr. knows better than most the power of history and ancestry. He’s a Footsteps to Freedom guide and the great-great-great-grandson of Frederick Douglass and the great-great-grandson of Booker T. Washington. The co-founder of the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives nonprofit, he has been involved with Footsteps since 2005. He wasn’t always enthusiastic about carrying on the familial legacy in this way, but the first tour he joined changed his mind.
“I knew the Underground Railroad. I knew generally what Frederick Douglass did; I knew generally what Booker T. Washington did, but I took a lot of it for granted because it was always around me. What this trip did for me was it really immersed me into the true history, and having an opportunity to go from the pages of the history books … to falling into the footsteps of these freedom seekers, it was natural for me to become part of the tour.”
The city of Detroit’s official historian, Jamon Jordan, picked up where Walker left off and led the group on a walking and driving tour, pointing out the streets named for the prominent French families who settled here — like Chene, Dubois, and Dequindre — and stopping by the former home of abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor George DeBaptiste.
We ended the tour at Hart Plaza at the Gateway to Freedom International Memorial, which sits just feet away from the river those escaping slavery would traverse under the cover of darkness to reach the shores of Canada. On this day, sunlight sparkled atop the water as music played and Jet Skis zipped by.
Learn more about Detroit’s role on the Underground Railroad by visiting these former stops.
This story originally appeared in the February 2025 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Our digital edition will be available on Feb. 10.
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