Back More
Salem Press

Table of Contents

Encyclopedia of African-American Writing, Fourth Edition

William Still

Nonfiction writer, historian, abolitionist, underground railroad conductor and station master

Born: October 7, 1821

Died: July 14, 1902

INTRODUCTION

From an early age, William Still knew that there were certain things he was never to mention: his parents’ true names (Levin and Sidney Steele, not Levin and Charity Still), his mother’s escape from slavery with his two older sisters, and his two older brothers-left behind in bondage so that the rest of the family might have a chance for escape. Sidney had at first tried to escape with all her children, but the slave hunters found her and returned her to her owner—and cruel punishment for her attempt. On a small farm in New Jersey, the fugitive Still family grew quite large, and William, the youngest, never revealed his secret. For more than 40 years, he knew that slave hunters might come to steal him, his siblings, and his mother back to slavery, so it was easy to keep quiet.

In the mid-1840s, William moved to Philadelphia and did odd jobs to earn his keep, while learning to read and write. In 1847, the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society hired him to do odd jobs for them, and gradually, his responsibilities expanded. He raised funds and disbursed them to conductors on the Underground Railroad, trained and coordinated the activities of the slave hunter lookouts, established safe houses, and found ways to provide forged free papers, food, clothing, medical care, jobs, money, and friends to fugitive slaves. He also provided contacts and resources for fugitives to escape farther north, to the safety of Canada. He and his wife, Letitia George Still, also opened their homes to fugitives. In various ways, Still helped about 800 people find their way to freedom.

IMPACT

Still also started keeping a journal. At first, he just kept track of his expenses. Then something happened to motivate him to keep more explicit records. In 1850, a former slave named Peter, somewhere in his 40s, had reached Still’s office, searching for some way to find his family. His grandmother had told him and his brother that their family was somewhere “up the Delaware River,” just before the boys were sold down the river to Alabama. Peter also knew that his mother was named Sidney, and his father was Levin. After 40 years, Peter was reunited with a baby brother he never knew he had and with his mother, his older sisters, and his numerous younger siblings. Levin had died several years earlier, so he was never able to celebrate that reunion. William then worked with Peter for three years to have his wife and two children rescued from bondage and reunited with him, when at last they succeeded.

With this motivation, Still expanded his journal to include the names, aliases, and owners’ names of everyone he served for the Anti-Slavery Society. He also recorded whatever details he could discover about their relatives, either still enslaved or in freedom. In 1872, long after Emancipation and the close of the Civil War, Still published the first edition of his book, including all the information he had been able to gather over the years: The Underground Rail Road: a Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, &c., Narrating the Hardships Hair-Breadth Escapes and Death Struggles of the Slaves in Their Efforts For Freedom, as Related by Themselves and Others, or Witnessed by the Author; Together with Sketches of Some of the Largest Stockholders, and Most Liberal Aiders and Advisers on the Road.

After his years of service to the cause of abolition, following Emancipation, Still continued to serve, donating time and money to those in need. He also worked with various social and civic organizations, encouraging other people to donate whatever resources they had to their community, helping to found an old-age home, an orphanage, and a YMCA. In 1888, Still and his son-in-law Matthew Anderson started the Berean Building and Loan Association, which enabled many Philadelphia families to buy property, including their own homes. Anderson was the second husband of Still’s daughter, Caroline Virginia Still Wiley Anderson, one of the first African-American women to graduate from a medical school (in 1878) and to practice medicine.

References

1 

Bolden, Tonya. 1999. Strong Men Keep Coming: The Book of African-American Men. New York: Wiley.

2 

Gardner, Eric, in Ostrom, Hans, and J. David Macey, Jr. (Eds.). 2005. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

3 

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (Eds.). 2008. African American National Biography (8 vols.). New York: Oxford University Press.

4 

Kenneth W. Goings, in African American Literature: The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature. 2001, 2002. New York: Oxford University Press.

5 

Logan, Rayford W., and Michael R. Winston (Eds.). 1982. Dictionary of American Negro Biography. New York: W. W. Norton.

6 

Rush, Theressa Gunnels, Carol Fairbanks Myers, and Esther Spring Arata. (Eds.). 1975. Black American Writers Past and Present: A Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary (Vol. 2). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.

7 

Salzman, Jack, David Lionel Smith, and Cornel West Eds. (1996). Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. New York: Macmillan.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
"William Still." Encyclopedia of African-American Writing, Fourth Edition, edited by Laura Nicosia, , James F. Nicosia & , Salem Press, 2022. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=AAW4E_0606.
APA 7th
William Still. Encyclopedia of African-American Writing, Fourth Edition, In L. Nicosia, , J. F. Nicosia & (Eds.), Salem Press, 2022. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=AAW4E_0606.
CMOS 17th
"William Still." Encyclopedia of African-American Writing, Fourth Edition, Edited by Laura Nicosia, , James F. Nicosia & . Salem Press, 2022. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=AAW4E_0606.