A Chapter In U.S. History Often Ignored: The Flight Of Runaway Slaves To Mexico

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February 28th, 2021

Former slave Felix Haywood, 92 years old when he was photographed in San Antonio in 1937, told an interviewer, “All we had to do was walk, but walk south, and we’d be free as soon as we crossed the Rio Grande.”

Library of Congress

In a forgotten cemetery on the edge of Texas in the Rio Grande delta, Olga Webber-Vasques says she’s proud of her family’s legacy – even if she only just learned the full story.

Turns out her great-great-grandparents, who are buried here, were agents in the little-known underground railroad that led through South Texas to Mexico during the 1800s. Thousands of enslaved people fled plantations to make their way to the Rio Grande, which became a river of deliverance.

“I don’t know why there wasn’t anything that we would’ve known as we were growing up. It amazes me to learn the underground deal, I had no idea at all,” says Webber-Vasques, 70, who recently learned the story of her forebearer, John Ferdinand Webber, from her daughter-in-law who has researched family history.

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