One Day, Levin... He Be Free

About the Book

Although Levin Still bought his freedom, his wife had to take hers by running away. Countless other blacks did the same via the Underground Railroad, and scores of them were helped in Philadelphia by Levin’s youngest son, William Still. This fearless man was Executive Secretary of the city’s Anti-slavery Society; in this position he kept meticulous records of the fugitives he aided and sent on to Canada. In 1872, almost a decade after Emancipation, he organized his accounts and published on of the major documents of the times, The Underground Railroad.

Lurey Kahn, whose mother was the granddaughter of Williams’s brother, describes Still’s lifelong efforts on behalf of his fellow blacks as she quotes liberally from his own remarkable records. William Still died in 1902, a prominent Philadelphian.

About the Author

Lurey Kahn is a descendant of the New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Boston Still family. One Day, Levin…He Be Free, a biography of William Still was originally published exactly one hundred years after his Underground Railroad, Porter & Coates, Philadelphia, 1872. He wanted to keep alive in the minds of young blacks the story of their heroism and courage as fugitives.