How a Columbus barber helped the Underground Railroad

COLUMBUS, Ohio ( WCMH ) — International Underground Railroad Month continues in Ohio.

A few weeks ago, NBC4 went to Cincinnati to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center to show how it works to preserve the system’s efforts to get enslaved people to freedom.

Watch: How a Columbus barber helped the Underground Railroad

Now, we present a look at a man who worked to shape the city of Columbus — Rev. James Preston Poindexter.

Poindexter moved to Columbus in 1838. A barber, he was also an abolitionist, a conductor on the Underground Railroad, and pastor of the anti-slavery Baptist church, then, in 1958, Second Baptist Church, founded two years before he arrived in the city.

Poindexter became Columbus’ first African-American city council member and, among other things, served four terms on the board of education.

Keeping up with the history of Second Baptist Church is personal for Sandra Jamison.

“I think it’s about six or seven other churches came out of Second Baptist,” she said. “Well, because of my family always being here at Second Baptist, I’m just sort of following in the footsteps.”

Keeping the story of the church’s iconic pastor alive is where Valerie Boyer, with the Ohio History Center, comes in.

“He was the pastor here for 40 years,” she said.

Boyer often follows Poindexter’s legacy.

“And his very active role on the Underground Railroad here in Ohio, as leader, as connector, and as person who was able to, like, tie all of these groups of people together, right, while actively conducting the business that needed to be done to get folks to freedom,” Boyer said.

Jamison is on a committee that works to preserve one of the country’s earliest public housing complexes, Poindexter Village on North Champion Avenue. When it opened in 1940, it had 426 units.

“We have the last two buildings,” Jamison said. “It’ll be museum and Poindexter Village Museum and Cultural Arts Center. And that second building will be the cultural arts, learning things and having different programs and we’re working with the Ohio Historical, and we’re going to be their 59th site.”

The site honors a man who made a difference in the lives of others.

“He’s also really good friends, and has, like formed this brotherhood amongst many different people, but particularly John T. Ward, right, who has the moving, moving company that develops into what we have now as E. E. Ward, and he’s friends with Joshua McCarter Simpson, who is actively writing and traveling and speaking out at these Underground Railroad conventions in Ohio, and he in the big, like, 1848 convention,” Boyer said. “That’s happening here. He’s responsible for bringing like, one of the members responsible for bringing Frederick Douglass.”

While Second Baptist wasn’t a stop on the Underground Railroad, it served as a centerpoint, of sorts, connecting those who worked to help others seeking freedom.

Special thanks to the Norris F. Schneider Collection for the photo of Joshua McCarter Simpson, which is seen in the video above.

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