JACKSON, MI — The rail lines running through Jackson were once part of a vital corridor to freedom, playing an integral role in the Underground Railroad and Black history.
Adam Crosswhite was born on a plantation in Kentucky as an enslaved American. After marrying and having children, Crosswhite learned of his master's plan to sell his family, which would split them up and potentially send them to the deep South.
Using the Underground Railroad network, Crosswhite and his family escaped to Marshall. However, their journey to freedom was far from over.
"The plantation owner, his former owner discovered where they were in Marshall and came with a posse to forcibly extract him and bring him back," said Linda Hass of the Jackson Historical Society.
This dramatic rescue took place in January 1847, nearly 20 years before the Emancipation Proclamation. During this period, the planter class could use the Fugitive Slave Act to capture any formerly enslaved people. But Marshall residents weren't going to let that happen.
"In the evening they transported him and his family in a wagon to Jackson. They did this in the dead of night," Hass said.
The Crosswhites hid in the woodyard and received very specific instructions to ensure they safely made it to Detroit.
"If there was an abolitionist that was known to them standing on the platform of that caboose, it was safe to enter that train," Hass said.
The family braved the cold and waited, eventually seeing the abolitionist and hopping the train to Detroit. They made it and crossed into Canada.
Hass says this was the very first documented train escape from Jackson, but it wouldn't be the last.
"Thousands of Freedom Seekers came through Jackson, and that's just for 1854," Hass said.
Hass says Jackson's Underground Railroad operated over the course of three decades. That statistic evokes pride in the present-day Jackson community.
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