Publication
THROUGH DARKNESS TO LIGHT
Photographs Along the Underground Railroad
In Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad, Jeanine Michna-Bales presents a remarkable series of images following a route from the cotton plantations of central Louisiana, through the cypress swamps of Mississippi and the plains of Indiana, north to Canada — a path of nearly fourteen hundred miles. The culmination of a ten-year research quest, Through Darkness to Light imagines a journey along the Underground Railroad as it might have appeared to a freedom seeker. Framing the powerful narrative is an introduction by Michna-Bales; a foreword by noted civil rights activist, politician and pastor Andrew J. Young; and essays by Fergus M. Bordewich, Robert F. Darden, and Eric R. Jackson.
Princeton Architectural Press (2017)
Hardcover, 10.5 x 7.75 in (26.7 x 19.7 cm)
192 pages: 100 color illustrations, 13 b/w illustrations
ISBN: 9781616895655
$40 unsigned | $60 signed
CONTRIBUTORS
Andrew J. Young, Jr. is an American politician, diplomat, author, activist and pastor currently residing in Atlanta, Georgia. He has served as a United States Congressman from Georgia’s 5th congressional district, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations under President Jimmy Carter, and Mayor of Atlanta. He was a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) during the Civil Rights Movement and was a close friend and supporter Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Young was a key strategist and negotiator during the Civil Rights Campaigns in Birmingham and Selma that resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Since leaving political office in 1990 Young has founded or served in multiple organizations centered on public policy, political lobbying and international relations. He continues his work today as the head of the Andrew J. Young Foundation focusing on eradicating world hunger and poverty.
Fergus M. Bordewich is a historian and the author of seven books on American history, including Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America (Amistad/Harper Collins, 2005), America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise that Preserved the Union (Simon & Schuster, 2012), Washington: The Making of the American Capital (Amistad/Harper Collins, 2009), and The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government (Simon & Schuster, 2016).
Eric R. Jackson is associate professor of history and director of the Black Studies Department at Northern Kentucky University. He is the coauthor of several books, including Reflections of African-American Peace Leaders: A Documentary History, 1898‑1967 (Edwin Mellen Press, 2003) and Cincinnati's Underground Railroad (Arcadia, 2014).
Robert F. Darden is professor of journalism, public relations, and new media at Baylor University. He is the author of People Get Ready! A New History of Black Gospel Music (Continuum/Bloomsbury, 2005) and Nothing But Love in God’s Water: Black Sacred Music from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, Volume I (Penn State University Press, 2014). He is also the cofounder of the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project at Baylor.
“It’s important, if not essential, to remember where we have been to understand both where we are and where we might go. Such insight into our past is what makes Jeanine Michna-Bales’s work Through Darkness to Light so powerful. Michna-Bales’s photographs take the reader on a haunting journey through the cotton plantations of Louisiana, the swamps of Mississippi, the flatness of Indiana, and on to the Canadian border. During a time in which borders are a central topic of conversation, Michna-Bales’s work brings one of the perennial American quandaries into focus: who are we and what have we done?”
“Photographer Jeanine Michna-Bales has painstakingly documented each step of the perilous journey many took through plantations, forests and swamps to sympathetic abolitionists and ultimately freedom. Her foreboding images printed together in her book highlight the dangers that both the fleeing slaves and those who helped them faced as they gave their lives in the quest of freedom and justice.”
“In her book Through Darkness to Light, photographer Jeanine Michna-Bales draws from written and oral historical accounts to recreate a possible journey to freedom. The photos are dark and mysterious and feel quiet and intimate, allowing the reader to place themselves into the journey, into the Underground Railroad.”
“Ms. Michna-Bales’s quest has led to an evocative book. While much has been written about the subject, there has been little visual documentation, an absence that makes the book even more consequential, both from the standpoint of history and of our contemporary understanding of slavery in pre-Civil War America.”