William Still

• William Still
• Born: October 7, 1821
• Died: July 14, 1902

Black leader and writer, was born in Shamong, New Jersey, the youngest of eighteen children of Levin Steel and Sidney Steel, both former Maryland slaves. His father had been able to purchase his freedom and he headed north without his family. His mother, after one unsuccessful escape attempt, managed to reach the North with two of her four children. To protect themselves from possible recapture, they changed their name to Still, and his mother assumed the name of Charity. They moved to the sparsely populated woodlands of Burlington County, New Jersey. Here, William Still was born and from early childhood worked on the family farm.

At the age of twenty, Still left home in search of an occupation. After drifting for three years, he settled in Philadelphia. There he taught himself to read and write. He held a number of menial jobs before joining the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery in 1847 as a janitor and mail clerk. In that year, he married Letitia George; they had four children, two boys and two girls. Over the years, his salary and duties at the society were increased. Although never a slave himself, Still was influenced by his parents’ experiences and dedicated himself to the cause of abolition. As a black, he identified with slaves in bondage. He took a special interest in the society’s work to assist runaway slaves making their way along the underground railroad to freedom in Canada.

In 1838 Thomas Garrett, a Quaker from Wilmington, Delaware, had organized a vigilance committee to aid fugitive slaves. This group disbanded early in 1852, but in December of that year it was reorganized into a committee of four to raise funds and keep detailed records. William Still was chosen acting chairman and for the next decade served as head and corresponding secretary of the underground railroad’s Philadelphia division. The main responsibility of this group was to provide funds to house escaping blacks, purchase necessary clothes and medical supplies, and provide transportation costs. Still personally answered correspondence for the group, met new arrivals in the city, and worked to find safe housing in Philadelphia’s black areas. In addition, he held regular abolitionist meetings to raise funds and publicized the cause. Between 1852 and 1861 over 800 black men, women, and children were safely passed through Philadelphia by the underground railroad.

William Still traveled to Canada in 1855 to visit former slaves and to see how they were adjusting to life. After he returned, he wrote a strong defense of their achievements and conduct in Canada. Also, in the late 1850s he became a friend and supporter of abolitionist John Brown. Brown confided to Still his plans for the Harpers Ferry raid six months in advance. Still avoided being implemented in the plot, but he housed Brown’s wife and children in Philadelphia when they traveled to see Brown shortly before his execution.

After the Civil War began, Still resigned from the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. He had acquired a substantial sum of money through real estate transactions, and he bought and managed a stove store, and later a coal business. In 1861 he established and financed an association for the collection and dissemination of information on American blacks, hoping to use the collected data to improve their social, economic, and political conditions. Two years previously, he had begun a campaign to obtain equal service for blacks on Philadelphia’s streetcars. The fight continued for eight years and culminated in the Pennsylvania state legislature’s enacting a bill ending this type of segregation. In 1867 he published a Brief Narrative of the Struggle for the Rights of the Colored People of Philadelphia in the City Railroad Cars.

Still’s most famous work, The Underground Railroad, appeared in 1872. During the decade of his work with the underground railroad, Still carefully recorded information on the slaves that passed through his station. This data included slave names, names of masters, places of origin, and means of escape. The written narratives were kept secret and hidden in a loft in Lebanon Seminary until after the Civil War. Still wrote the book to show the heroism of former slaves, and to help blacks overcome feelings of social inferiority. The work emphasized the ingenuity, bravery, and daring of fugitive slaves. It is the fullest and most complete account of the operations of the underground railroad.

Still became unpopular with the black community in Philadelphia in 1874 when he supported the Democratic mayoral candidate. He nevertheless defended his actions in an Address on Voting and Laboring. He served as a member of the Freedman’s Aid Commission and the Philadelphia Board of Trade. A practicing Presbyterian, in 1880 he became head of the local Sunday school, and in 1885 was sent by the Philadelphia presbytery as a commissioner to the General Assembly in Cincinnati. Still established the first Young Men’s Christian Association for blacks in this country. He was also vice president of the Home for Aged and Infirm Colored Persons, on the board of trustees of the Black Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Orphans’ Home, head of a home for destitute black children, and a member of the board of trustees of Stover College.

William Still died at the age of eighty at his home in Philadelphia. In addition to his work in assisting fugitive slaves to find freedom, his greatest accomplishment was the publication of a book that paid tribute to them.

William Still’s papers can be found at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Friends’ Historical Library at Swarthmore College, the Ohio Historical Society, and the New York Public Library. The best account of his life can be found in L. Khan, One Day, Levin . . He Be Free: William Still and the underground railroad (1972). Also useful are W. H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom (1898); L. Gara, “William Still and the Underground Railroad,” Pennsylvania History, January 1961; and B. Quarles, Black Abolitionists (1969). On Still’s relations with John Brown see R. O. Boyer, The Legend of John Brown: A Biography and a History (1973). An obituary appeared in The New York Times, July 15, 1902. See also The Dictionary of American Biography (1935).