In 2000, the coordinator of Southeast Region National Park Service National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program visited Natchez to learn about local volunteer efforts to preserve the historical enslavement markets sites located at Forks of the Road.

During this time in a public forum at Co-Lin Community College, a partnership was consummated with FRSI, in the interests of relating stories of flight and escapes from slavery pertaining to the Underground Railroad in the Miss-Lou.

Our relationship with the railroad’s network enabled us to have the Forks of Road slavery site included in the Network to Freedom Program based upon documentation of an enslaved person escaping from “slave” dealer Joseph Biggs of St. Louis Missouri at the Forks.

The City of Natchez signed off on the application clearing the way for the forks’ street juncture to be included as a Network to Freedom site, to be known around the world.

Should the city submit an amended application to include the land of the triangular owned site, it could be incorporated into the network site.

From the beginning of FRSI’s partnership, the coordinator of the NPS Southeast Region’s Network to Freedom Program committed to helping our voluntary efforts become a success.

In 2001, FRSI developed an educational traveling exhibit from a $25,000 Lower Mississippi Delta Grant realized through the efforts of the Southeast Network to Freedom Coordinator. The exhibit, titled: African/European Roots of the Underground Railroad (story of freedom struggles from Africa to Forks of Road), has traveled across the United States and is currently on loan in New York and Ohio.

A few years later, with a $7,500 network matching grant, FRSI initiated a research project titled Proving Mississippi River a Major Underground Railroad Uhuru (Freedom) Route Memphis to Gulf of Mexico. Our ongoing research debunks the popular myth, that once sold down the river, enslaved people did not generally escape and or that the railroad was a northern states’ phenomenon.

Currently, with a $10,000 network grant to apply research from our research project, we are developing an educational interpretive brochure about the forks. It is titled, “Forks of the Roads Enslavement Markets a Major Southwest Hub of “America’s Domestic Slave Trade.”

Based upon FRSI’s request to Corps of Engineers to perform a study of black cultural presence along the Natchez bluffs omitted by earlier studies, the Corps let a $65,000 contract based upon NPS Network to Freedom Program consultations and criterion.

As the Forks of the Road enslavement markets history grew in national status Network to Freedom Coordinators from across the nation expressed a desire to meet in Natchez and see the Forks of the Road. They were scheduled to meet in Natchez in 2005, however, Hurricane Katrina caused that meeting to be cancelled.

To make up for that 2005 missed opportunity, Friends of the Forks of the Roads Society Inc., is proud to announce it is hosting the National Park Service National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program Coordinators and staff persons Network to Freedom Application Review Gathering in Natchez beginning Monday.

Billed as “Bound for Glory on the Bayou Gathering II,” visitors will arrive at the Hampton Inn March 30.

They will meet in a staff meeting in Natchez National Historic Park’s conference room all day Monday, attend a meeting open to the public to review current applications to the network in the Board of Aldermen Chambers from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. April 1.

On April 2 the group will tour Fort Rosalie, the William Johnson House, the Natchez Landing, Brown’s Sawmill site, the Natchez National Cemetery, Forks of the Road, Prince Ibrahima’s enslavement plantation site and Grand Village of the Natchez Nation. All these sites may be eligible to be in the network. As a FRSI partner, Tulane University’s Mayor’s Project will present a Power Point presentation of its projected plans for development of an interpretive component at the Forks during lunch at Ryan’s Restaurant.

The Network to Freedom Program defines the Underground Railroad as “resistance to enslavement through escape and flight through the end of the Civil War.”

It “coordinates preservation and education efforts nationwide, and works to integrate local historical sites, museums, and interpretive programs associated with the UGRR into a mosaic of community, regional, and national stories.”

Ser Seshs Ab Heter-CM Boxley is the coordinator or the Friends of the Forks of the Road Society.