Monday, February 01, 1999
Underground Railroad museum has $25M toward its goal
BY LUCY MAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Cincinnati's National Underground Railroad Freedom Center has raised $25 million of its $80 million goal. And that's before the center's national fund-raising campaign has even begun.
“We think that it's a real positive sign of support from the community,” said Dianne Tindall Hennes, the center's national director of development and communications. “We feel very good about that.”
Half the money has been raised from public sources, such as the city of Cincinnati, Hamilton County and the state of Ohio, and the rest from private contributions.
The freedom center (www.undergroundrailroad.com) aims to celebrate the courage and collaboration of the Underground Railroad, a secret network of churches, farms and caves used by slaves seeking freedom in the 1800s. Several of the “stops” were in southwest Ohio.
The center's riverfront museum is scheduled to open in 2003 near the base of the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge.
Since it was first proposed in 1994, the freedom center has gained recognition nationwide.
Freedom center President and CEO Ed Rigaud, for example, will be a keynote speaker for a Black History Month program Tuesday at the National Museum of American History, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution.
He and Robert Stanton of the National Park Service will talk about the efforts of the freedom center to preserve and tell the story of the Underground Railroad in relation to important contemporary issues.
Toward the end of this month, the freedom center expects to be featured in the History Channel's documentary, Save Our History: the Underground Railroad.
The national fund-raising campaign doesn't start until spring, when the center expects to have architectural drawings of the museum.
“That's why we're feeling so good about it right now,” Ms. Hennes said.
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