Walkers who began the journey from Cape May on April 2, to Burlington City, on May 28, completed the last leg with 60 people. A descendant of Harriet Tubman spoke at an afternoon ceremony.

They had walked several miles that last Saturday in May when a woman dressed as Harriet Tubman approached.

She wore a long black skirt, a jacket with tattered sleeves, and a large black hat. She held a lantern in her right hand.

“Come on, keep a steady pace going,” Daisy Nelson Century, the Harriet Tubman interpreter, said. “We’re almost to the river. Come on, we’re almost to freedom land.”

It was the final eight miles of a 165-mile journey.

That morning, Ken Johnston, a walking artist from Philadelphia, and Deborah Price, a volunteer at the Underground Railroad Museum in Eastampton were completing the Walk to Freedom that began in Cape May on April 2.

The goal of the walk was to trace the South Jersey routes Underground Railroad conductors used to help Black people fleeing from enslavement

Johnston planned the walk in honor of the 200th anniversary of the birth of abolitionist and Civil War spy Harriet Tubman in 1822.

For nearly two months of mostly weekend trips, Johnston, Price, and Alvin Corbett, a New Jersey-based public historian, walked on their own.

Original Article