Spring Steps to Freedom

A Burlington Spring to Freedom: Walking the Path of 400 or 500 Years – Headed Toward Jubilee

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.”

— Isaiah 61:1¹

To Friends, Neighbors, and All Who Seek a More Just World

This spring, as stronger light returns to warm old bricks and ancient trees of our Meetinghouse buildings and grounds, we are called not just to a season of events, but on to futures upcoming; of continuous seasons; returning; reemerging truth. We are invited to walk a path—one marked by 500 years of African presence, endurance, resistance on this continent in what is now the United States. 

Even if you are more comfortable with a timeframe of 400 years of English colonial occupation of Turtle Island; violence against “others,” which our world still faces today, starts in violence already extant in what we call Europe today, the golden crescent and the empires and history of the Mediterranean.

While Quaker tradition is a strong peacemaker tradition; none can argue that violence of the British Isles and beyond those shores is not in the batter of where we are today.

This is a presence that exposes what some historians rightly call an “original sin” of this nation. This sin, the enslavement of other beings made in the image of God, is woven into the very fabric of our country that declared liberty in 1776.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of that declaration, we must ask: whose freedom was being declared? The answer is a wound that still requires healing. 

This spring, the Burlington Quaker Meeting House and Quarter becomes a waystation on a journey toward that healing, culminating in an arrival of #FreedomWalk2026. This modern-day pilgrimage is retracing paths of those who dared to claim our God-given human rights of freedom. A walk from below the Mason Dixon line; that seeks freedom while following pathways of those who built and maintained an Underground Railroad.

This is not a celebration of a nation’s birth, but a solemn commemoration of 500 years of African resilience and a recommitment to completing the unfinished work of liberation. It is a season to remember that before there was a United States, there were enslaved Africans; that alongside the fight for independence, there was a fight for personhood; and that the truest test of our faith is our willingness to walk together with our neighbors on the path of justice.

Centering Black Leadership, Honoring Our Shared Humanity

In this work, we must be clear: the struggle for freedom in America has always been led by Black Americans. From the self-liberators who fled plantations to organizers of the Civil Rights Movement, it is Black vision, Black sacrifice, and Black faith that have consistently pulled the nation toward its stated ideals. As the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass understood, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”² The demands for justice have always risen first from the oppressed.

Our role as a faith community—as Quakers, as people of conscience, as BIPOC and white kin alike—is not to lead this movement, but to follow the lead of those most directly impacted by the legacies of slavery. It is to stand in solidarity, to use our platforms to amplify Black voices, and to do the internal work of uprooting the racism within ourselves and our institutions. This is the path of “intraperfectability”—the continual, inward seeking of perfection that Quakerism calls us to—and the recognition of our “interbeing,” the profound truth that our lives are completely interconnected. We are not truly free until all are free.³

The fiery witness of Sojourner Truth reminds us that freedom is not given; it is taken. “If women want any rights more than they’s got, why don’t they just take them, and not be talking about it?”⁴ She’s calling embodied action; refusals to wait on permission from power to challenge us to move beyond performative allyship into risky, living works of reparation and systemic change.

We must hold ourselves accountable to hard truths in our own history. Early Quaker John Woolman walked among the Meetings of our region and saw the hypocrisy firsthand. He wrote with sorrow, “Many of the white people in these provinces take little or no care of negroes in their sickness… and I have heard that some people on some occasions have even been guilty of murdering them.”⁵ Woolman’s testimony is a mirror held up to our community, reminding us that silence and complicity are sins we must continue to confess and repair. If we are guided,  Spirit may integrate visions. I see Lucretia Mott, Released minister who understood struggles for peace. She raised a call for cruel indenture, enslavement, for women. We are one same Love. She declared a, “cause of Peace has had my share of efforts, with the cause of the Slave, and of the Woman.”⁶ Her life demonstrates that our testimonies are not separate boxes to check, but a seamless garment of justice. To work for an end to violence and wars is to work for the liberation of all people from every form of oppression.

Part I: The Sounds of the Spirit (April 11th at 3pm )

Joyful Noise: An Afternoon of Jazz Vespers with Internationally  Renowned Violinist, Diane Monroe & Vibraphonist, Tony Miceli

Before we walk, we must listen. On April 11th, the historic Burlington Quaker Meeting House—the very cradle of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting—will resonate with sounds of spiritual resilience. Jazz, born from the African American experience, is music of lament, improvisation, and transcendent joy. It is sound finding a path of practice, experience, and improvisation when none seems to exist. It’s cadence can remind us of a people who, in the words of the spiritual, “walked through the valley and sighed.” It’s part of a spirit of coded messages for the path north that also laid foundations for all American music. This afternoon with the brilliant Diane Monroe and Tony Miceli is a chance to hear that story in a sacred space—a story of sorrow, yes, but also of unquenchable hope. https://JoyfulNoiseJazz.eventbrite.com

Part II: Caring for Our Common Home (April 18th)

Come to Mount Holly Meeting’s GeoFest

Our Quaker testimony of Stewardship of the Earth connects directly to the struggle for human freedom. The land stolen, cleared, and worked by enslaved people is the same land we are now called to heal. The climate crisis, like slavery, disproportionately harms Black and brown communities. As we seek to right the wrongs done to people, we must also heal the planet that groans under the weight of injustice. The Prophet Isaiah cries out, “The earth dries up and withers… the earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws” (Isaiah 24:4-5). By investing in sustainable practices like Mount Holly’s geothermal project, we are participating in the repair of that broken covenant, honoring the Creator by caring for creation, ensuring it is a sanctuary for all generations to come.

Part III: The Walk to Freedom—Faith, Friendship, & Freedom:  The History & Music of the Underground Railroad (May 16th at 1pm)

The heart of our season beats strong again with strength of purpose on May 16th, when walker, historian, activist, and founder of Menare Foundation, Anthony Cohen, brings #FreedomWalk2026 to our Meeting’s doorstep.

#FreedomWalk2026 Mission and Vision

As described by The Menare Foundation, #FreedomWalk2026 will be a 750-mile international freedoms pilgrimage along 19th-century routes to freedom, Starting in Sandy Springs, Maryland (South of the Mason Dixon line and many U.S. origins of enslavement with for example Maryland and Virginia), walking to Canada. It is a modern retracing. This is 30 years after Cohen’s first historic walk, designed to “commemorate the brave self-liberators, the abolitionists, and their secret networks.”⁷ In partnership with organizations like Coming to the Table, the walk envisions “a nation where America’s unfinished story is completed to form a more just and perfect union.”⁸

• Why This Moment, Why This Place, Is there a Resonance here to Notice and Remember?

Burlington is not just a stop on a map. It is the home of one of the nation’s first colonial protest against slavery. In 1688, the first yearly meeting in the colonies was held at the Burlington Yearly Meeting, during which Germantown Quakers read a petition against slavery.  Abolitionist Benjamin Lay protested with pig’s blood, and John Woolman served as a minister in Burlington.  Additionally, abolitionist pharmacist, William Allinson was a member of  and operated a documented Underground Railroad station directly across the street from the Burlington Quaker Meeting House.   For many families and many F/friends it is an origin point of Quakerism in the mid-Atlantic, a place where their faith first grappled publicly with a diseased moral rot of slavery. For Anthony Cohen to arrive here, on a walk that begins at Sandy Spring Meeting in Maryland, is to bring the story full circle. It returns the narrative of abolitionism to one of its spiritual homes. It reminds us that the first whispers of freedom for all were often spoken in Meetinghouses like this one, even as the community struggled to live up to its own Light.

A 500-Year Reckoning of Yearnings for Freedom made Manifest

As the writer and theologian Howard Thurman reflected on the spirituals, “They were unable to articulate their own yearnings in the language of the culture of which they were a part, but they could sing.”⁹ The Underground Railroad was that yearning made manifest—a physical reaching for the “promised land.” This is the “original sin” we must name: that a nation’s wealth was built on the backs of those it deemed less than human. As Frederick Douglass thundered in his 1852 speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”: “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”¹⁰ Our event on May 16th is a space for that mourning, and for the holy work that follows.

The Arrival, A traveling statue of Underground Railroad’s Harriet Tubman, and a Gathering

How can communities welcome Anthony Cohen to the Burlington Quaker Meeting House grounds? Listen. He will share stories from his journey, stories that echo the voices of his great-great-granduncle who fled Savannah in 1849, and of the thousands who followed the North Star. We will gather on the Burial Grounds, where generations of Friends—some abolitionists, some complicit in the sin of slavery—lie at rest. The soil there holds their memory and their unfinished business.

This event is a living testament to the work of  Delores ‘Dee’ Corbett, director of the Burlington Quaker Meeting House & Center for Conference;  Coming to the Table, one of the partners of #FreedomWalk2026, which “provides leadership, resources, and a supportive environment for all who wish to acknowledge and heal wounds from racism that is rooted in the United States’ history of slavery.”¹¹ It is work of Dr. Giavanni Washington, CTTT program manager, who speaks of “ancestral restoration and racial healing.”¹² It is the work of Venetia Bailey, peacebuilder and CTTT leader, and Lynda Davis, a social worker and anti-racism organizer. These are the modern abolitionists, walking the path beside us, demonstrating that our shared humanity—our interbeing—is the only ground upon which true peace can be built.

Footnotes

¹ Isaiah 61:1 (New International Version). This passage, quoted by Jesus in Luke 4:18, is a foundational text for liberation theology and movements for justice.

² Frederick Douglass, The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? (Speech delivered in Glasgow, Scotland, March 26, 1860). This echoes sentiment of his famous 1857 speech: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

³ Term “interbeing” was coined by the Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh to describe the profound interconnectedness of all life. Its use here aligns to Quaker concept of “that of God in everyone.” I introduced a similar word that I coined ‘intraperfectability.’

⁴ Sojourner Truth, “Speech at the Woman’s Rights Convention” (Akron, Ohio, 1851). Precise wording varies across transcriptions; this version reflects the spirit of her call to direct action.

⁵ John Woolman, The Journal of John Woolman (1774). Woolman’s journal is a key primary source on early Quaker grappling with slavery.

⁶ Lucretia Mott, quoted in Lucretia Mott: Her Complete Speeches and Sermons, ed. Dana Greene (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1980). Mott’s life and work embodied the intersection of abolition, women’s rights, and peace.

⁷ “Our Mission,” The Menare Foundation, accessed [date], https://menare.org/mission/.

⁸ “#FreedomWalk2026 Vision,” The Menare Foundation, accessed [3/19/2026], https://menare.org/freedomwalk2026/.

⁹ Howard Thurman, Deep River: The Negro Spiritual and the American Folk Song (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1945), 27.

¹⁰ Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” (Speech delivered in Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852).

¹¹ “About Us,” Coming to the Table, accessed [3/19/2026], https://comingtothetable.org/about-us/.

¹² Dr. Giavanni Washington, quoted in Coming to the Table program materials.

Bibliography

Douglass, Frederick. The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? Speech, Glasgow, Scotland, March 26, 1860.

Douglass, Frederick. “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Speech, Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852.

Greene, Dana, ed. Lucretia Mott: Her Complete Speeches and Sermons. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1980.

The Menare Foundation. “#FreedomWalk2026 Vision.” Accessed [3/19/2026]. https://menare.org/freedomwalk2026/.

The Menare Foundation. “Our Mission.” Accessed [3/19/2026]. https://menare.org/mission/.

Thurman, Howard. Deep River: The Negro Spiritual and the American Folk Song. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1945.

Truth, Sojourner. “Speech at the Woman’s Rights Convention.” Akron, Ohio, 1851.

Washington, Dr. Giavanni. Quoted in Coming to the Table program materials.

Woolman, John. The Journal of John Woolman. 1774