Each chapter about a state in The Underground Railroad is prefaced by an advertisement that appeared in a newspaper seeking the capture and return of a person who ran away from their enslavement there. The first five are mostly verbatim from the original source. The last one in the novel is about Cora. “That’s one I created for her, hopefully being true to her story,” said Whitehead.

In this activity, students will engage in historical research using the University of North Carolina’s digitized runaway slave classifieds. 

Prior to the activity, students might examine the notices included in The Underground Railroad. They can be found in the following chapters and pages.

Chapter: Georgia, p. 10 

Chapter: South Carolina, p. 84

Chapter: North Carolina, p. 142

Chapter: Tennessee, p. 198 

Chater: Indiana p. 238, 

Chapter: The North – p. 298 (Cora)

Ask students to visit the University of North Carolina’s digitized runaway slave classifieds. The website can be found here. 

Have students complete a source analysis worksheet or an observations, thoughts, and questions chart about a runaway notice that they discover through research. 

Ask students to find a learning partner(s) to summarize their findings.

Discuss with the class or in small groups:

• Why do you think Whitehead included these advertisements before each chapter?
• What insight do these advertisements provide about the time period? 
• To what extent are advertisements reliable as a source of information about the past? What are they most useful for? What are their limitations?
• What information does your advertisement corroborate what you learned from those in Whitehead’s novel? What information is something new that you gleaned?
• Compare the historical advertisements to the fictional advertisement created by Whitehead. What is similar? What is different? What message do you think Whitehead wanted to convey? 

Discuss the key question: What are the benefits and limits of using historical fiction to understand the past?