BY PAUL BARTON
Enquirer Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- Almost 133 years after it brought its last slaves to freedom, the National Underground Railroad is finally getting the attention of Congress.
The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote today on legislation that would direct the National Park Service to formally commemorate the vast number of sites that made up the railroad nationwide.
The term refers to the system of back roads, swamps, waterways, hidden shelters, tunnels and forests that were used to move slaves from slaveholding states to freedom from around 1800 to the end of the Civil War.
The bill authorizes $500,000 annually for the Park Service to use in allocating staff to the project, developing educational materials and providing technical assistance to the private-public partnerships around the country that will be taking steps to commemorate different sites.
The centerpiece is expected to be the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, an $80 million project -- to be funded almost totally with private money -- that is expected to open in 2002.
The railroad spanned 29 states, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. More than 150 underground railroad sites have been identified in Ohio, and lawmakers from Ohio are playing key roles in sponsoring the bill.
"The Underground Railroad story is one of cooperation and bravery in the struggle for freedom," said Rep. Rob Portman, R-Terrace Park.
"There is much we can learn from it today to facilitate reconciliation and improve race relations."
Senate sponsors, including Republican Mike DeWine of Ohio and Democrat Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, are expected to take the House-passed version and bring it to a vote in the Senate as soon as possible.
"The abolitionist movement played a unique and very important role in the history of race relations in our country," Mr. DeWine said.
"The Underground Railroad is the great story of blacks and whites working together during one of the darkest times in our nation's history -- the period of slavery -- and taking immense personal risks to liberate slaves."
The legislation, expected to pass overwhelmingly, was introduced in May 1997, and the delay in passing it has raised the ire of supporters. Efforts by some lawmakers to attach unrelated measures to the bill slowed its passage out of House Natural Resources Committee, congressional staff said.
"The Underground Railroad is a symbol of the determination of African Americans to reach for the American dream," said Hugh Price, president of the National Urban League.
