Diane Miller, Historian

The Underground Railroad in Kansas

Diane is an historian who retired from the National Park Service after 39 years. For 25 years, Diane managed the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Inspired by Native American involvement with the Underground Railroad, Diane wrote her dissertation on “Wyandotte, Shawnee, and African American Resistance to Slavery in Ohio and Kansas.”

Todd Mildfelt, Historian & Author

Kansas Radicals and the Underground Railroad

Todd Mildfelt taught history, social studies, and science in special education programs in secondary schools. He researches and writes about territorial Kansas, the Underground Railroad, and African American migration. In the summer of 2001, Todd began researching Charles Leonhardt, a man who desired to help make Kansas a free state. From this research, Todd’s first book, The Secret Danites, Kansas’ First Jayhawkers was born. He recently published, with co-author David Schafer, Abolitionist of the Most Dangerous Kind about James Montgomery.

Darryl Hogan, Underground Railroad Descendant

A Descendant’s Perspective

Darryl Hogan is a computer software architect and past vice president of the Board of the Amherstburg Freedom Museum in Ontario. His ancestors Sam and Jane Harper escaped enslavement in Missouri and were part of the “12”—the group of freedom seekers that John Brown escorted on his last trip east from Kansas. This group used the Lane Trail to travel north from Topeka through Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa. For Darryl, his ancestors’ story illustrates the power of perseverance. Darryl is included in a photographic exhibit called “North is Freedom” by Canadian photographer Yuri Dojc. The exhibit documents descendants of formerly enslaved people who escaped to life of freedom in Canada.

Anthony Cohen, Historian & Author

Honoring History through Heritage Tourism

Anthony Cohen is an experiential historian and author. He launched his career in the spring of 1996, embarking on a two-month journey from Sandy Spring, Maryland, traveling 1,200 miles by foot, boat, and rail to Amherstburg, Ontario. Cohen followed the paths of freedom seekers along wilderness trails and waterways, to fugitive slave communities and Quaker sanctuaries, while stopping in towns along the way to chronicle their stories through artifacts, documents, and oral accounts. He made two more walks, traveling in 1998 from Mobile, Alabama, to Windsor, Ontario and in 2015, following the route of his great-great-granduncle who fled slavery in Savannah, Georgia, in 1849 for freedom in Canada.

Cohen is founder and president of The Menare Foundation, Inc., a national nonprofit organization dedicated to “Preserving the Legacy of the Underground Railroad,” and operates the Button Farm Living History Center, a 40-acre farm that depicts 1850s plantation life in Maryland. He has served as a consultant to the National Parks Conservation Association, Maryland Public Television, and NASA, among others, and trained Oprah Winfrey for her role as Sethe in the 1998 motion picture Beloved. Cohen has served on the Governor’s Board for Tourism Development for the State of Maryland.