My husband and I had gone to Richmond, Indiana, to learn about Black history, and we found what we were looking for. We toured the home of Levi and Catharine Coffin, Quaker abolitionists who helped some 2,000 slaves to achieve freedom, and we strolled along the Walk of Fame at Gennett Records, the first company to record Black entertainers. We drove to Longtown on the Ohio border, where free Blacks established a town that could be moved across the road to a different state if laws in one of them became too restrictive for African Americans.
Along the way we also found lots of surprises and much more that we wanted to explore. Richmond is a lot like other midsize communities in the Midwest with a grand Romanesque courthouse, a revitalized downtown, a historic railroad station and a lively past peopled with Native Americans, explorers, early settlers, and—as we had found out—runaway slaves and their abolitionist helpers. But the resemblance stops there, and every kind of traveler will find something new and unusual here to enjoy.
