HIGHLAND HEIGHTS — What may be the only institute in the country dedicated to studying the Underground Railroad will receive $920,000 rom the federal government. The Institute for Freedom Studies at Northern Kentucky University will use the money to further research and education about the network of African-Americans and abolitionists who helped slaves escape from the South to freedom in the North before the Civil War.

        The federal funding is part of the 2002 education appropriations bill.

        The program currently has a director, an office at NKU, several faculty members working from other disciplines, staff members; several classes are offered, too.

        Institute director Prince Brown Jr. said the money will be used for more staff, technology, work-study programs for undergraduates and other purposes.

        Mr. Brown said the mission of the institute is to use local resources, such as original Underground Railroad “stations” in Tristate buildings and documents stored in courthouses and museums, to gain a greater understanding of the Underground Railroad movement of the 1800s.

        The movement, which brought Southern slaves North and across the Ohio River to freedom, had strong roots in the Tristate, with abolitionist families the Beechers and the Stowes, and Salmon P. Chase, known as “the attorney general for runaway slaves,” operating on both sides of the Ohio River.

        “The richness of that allows us to do research that is going to be of primary nature,” Mr. Brown said.

        One of the institute's short-term goals is to begin documenting Underground Railroad activity in Kentucky, which allowed slavery.

        The institute is working with the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, a national museum dedicated to the history and plight of slaves slated to open in 2004.

        Together the agencies will conduct activities and research, pay for a joint staff member, provide NKU students with internship op portunities at the center and develop ways for authenticating sites as Underground Railroad stations.

        Mr. Brown said the idea for the institute came about through discussions between himself and other academicians who see the Underground Railroad as a neglected area of American culture.

        Orloff Miller, a director at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, said studying the railroad is difficult because it was illegal at the time. Limited documentation exists, so those who study the field movement need to research family stories and other oral histories. Mr. Miller thinks Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky are the perfect places to have a national research center and university institute because of the racial tensions in the area.

        “There are people who wonder why someone would want to make this area the location for the study,” Mr. Miller said.

        “If there is a problem here, there's no better place on Earth for such an understanding,” he said. “If we do our jobs well, then what we are doing becomes a gift back to the community.”

Institutes lay study groundwork

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