Hale Woodruff, The Underground Railroad

Why It Matters

The murals reframe historical memory by making the struggles and agency of Black Americans central to campus life and education, highlighting art’s role in civic instruction and racial uplift. Woodruff’s work remains an influential example of how public art can teach history, inspire identity, and connect past resistance to contemporary educational missions.

Summary

At the William Harvey Museum of Art at Talladega College, Hale Woodruff’s six-panel mural cycle—including the panel titled The Underground Railroad—depicts the collaboration between abolitionists and enslaved people seeking freedom. The Underground Railroad canvas traces a left-to-right movement toward Ohio, emphasizing intergenerational hope, risk, and agency through detailed gestures, clothing, and landscape cues such as a ‘‘State Line, Ohio. Half mile’’ inscription. Woodruff dramatizes tension and resolve—figures tearing down a runaway-slave poster, barefoot children, and a range of emotional expressions—to show the secrecy, trauma, and solidarity underpinning escape to freedom. Placed in the college library, the paintings served as daily moral and educational touchstones for students, reinforcing pride and the imperative of progress.

Original Description

Hale Woodruff, The Underground Railroad, 1942, oil on canvas, 173.2 x 313.7 cm (Toledo Art Museum) © Estate of Hale Woodruff

This is the first in a series of three canvases:

• The Underground Railroad

• Opening Day at Talladega College

• The Building of Savery Library

that were commissioned for Savery Library at Talladega College, Talladega, Alabama

Special thanks to Talladega College and Perry H. Trice, MLIS BFA Director, William R. Harvey Museum of Art and Special Collections Librarian/Archivist, Savery Library

Speakers: Turry M. Flucker, Vice President of Collections and Partnerships, Terra Foundation for American Art, and Beth Harris, Smarthistory, at the Dr. William R. Harvey Museum, Talladega College, Talladega, Alabama