On Underground Railroad trail to Canada, Philly’s ‘Walking Artist’ pauses in Albany

Philadelphia “walking artist” Ken Johnston, who is currently on a 450-mile walk to Canada, spent the last three days in Albany, N.Y., resting and exploring the local Underground Railroad history there before resuming his journey on Friday.

Johnston arrived in Albany July 26, Day 13 and 148.5 miles since he left Harlem at the start of his New York-to-Canada “Walk to Freedom” on July 14.

His goal is to make it to St. Catharines, Ontario, where the abolitionist Harriet Tubman lived before the start of the Civil War.

Although he has walked thousands of miles over the last five years, Johnston, 60, said sometimes he has doubts.

“One of the reasons why it was important to make it to Albany was that I realized I can really do this,” he said Wednesday.

“I can do those other 300 miles ahead. If there were any kinks in my body, they would have come up in the first 148 miles. But nothing came up, no body aches, no sprained ankles. Now, I know I can make it.”

The 450-mile Canada walk, just as the 165-mile walk he completed in South Jersey earlier this year, is part of Johnston’s tribute to honor the 200th anniversary of Tubman’s birth in 1822.

To get to Albany, he walked north from Harlem, along U.S. Route 9 through New Rochelle, White Plains, Peekskill, and Poughkeepsie, before arriving there on Tuesday.

He had made connections with the Albany Friends Meeting Center, where he stayed from Tuesday to Friday morning, through a Quaker friend in New England.

“Here it is, 170-plus years later [since Black people freed themselves from slavery by escaping] and Quakers are still helping someone who is replicating that experience of freedom seekers and taking me in,” Johnston said.

In Poughkeepsie, a family he had connected with by email also allowed him to stay at their home for a night. They weren’t Quakers, he said, but were friends of Quakers.

» READ MORE: Philly’s ‘Walking Artist’ embarks on another leg of his epic tribute to Harriet Tubman. This time it is a 450-mile trek from N.Y. to Canada.

Johnston explored the history of abolition work in New York state and met with Paul Stewart and Mary Liz Stewart, who cofounded Albany’s Underground Railroad Education Center.

He said the Stewarts helped him map out the route for the next leg of his walk and pointed out historic Underground Railroad sites he could visit along the way. Paul Stewart and several staffers of the education center walked with him for the first several blocks from the center as he began the next leg from the center at 8 a.m. Friday.

The education center is located within the historic Stephen and Harriet Myers Residence. The Myers were a free, Black married couple who lived in the house in the mid-1850s. The Myers were leaders in the antislavery movement, and Stephen Myers was the leader of the Albany Vigilance Committee.

The Myers’ role in Albany was similar to that of William Still’s in Philadelphia, Johnston said. They provided shelter, food, clothing, and assistance to freedom seekers who were fleeing from enslavement in the South.

Johnston learned that in the North, many freedom seekers, the people fleeing slavery, did not always walk during their escapes. They were transported by horse and buggy, by train, or by boat.

In an interview, Paul Stewart said he is not a Quaker, but was a social worker with a deep interest in history. His wife is a former schoolteacher, and they helped to save the Stephen and Harriet Myers home from being demolished in the 1970s. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Stewart said he has been impressed by Johnston’s walking trips to uncover the same history that his education center is teaching. “I think it’s a great project,” Stewart said Thursday.

On Wednesday Johnston met with teenagers enrolled in the education center’s summer program, the Young Abolitionist Leadership Institute (YALI).

He said he thought the teens, ages 14 to 18, seemed excited to hear about his walking projects.

“They were moved by my commitment,” he said. “They were saying, ‘Yo, I can’t believe he’s walked all this way from Harlem. That’s crazy!’ ”

They also asked him questions such as how many pairs of hiking shoes he goes through.

It just so happened that Johnston, who usually buys a new pair of hiking shoes before starting a walk, had not bought shoes before starting the Canada walk. Plus he thought he had a few more miles left on the shoes he used in his South Jersey walk.

But in Albany, he ordered a new pair of hiking shoes, at a cost of about $178. They were mailed to him care of Stewart at the Underground Railroad Education Center and arrived Thursday, the day before he hit the road again.

To beat the heat during the week of severe temperatures, Johnston said he often awakened at 3 a.m. to get an early start.

In New York state, there were days of 97-degree heat. And on those days, he only managed to walk 10 to 12 miles a day.

“Some mornings I begin walking as early as 4 AM to get ahead of the heat. Sometimes I have to stop walking by 8 o’clock because it’s so hot. On those days, I find a park, pitch my tent under a tree, and remain in the shade for the duration of the day. Other times I have used public libraries as cooling centers,” Johnston posted to his Go Fund Me page on July 20.

Along the way, he stopped at local public libraries to post videos to his website of interviews with local historians.

He posted one of La Fern Joseph, who conducts tours of Underground Railroad sites in Peekskill, and of Warren Applegate, a caretaker of the “Persons of Color Cemetery,” in the Village of Kinderhook. The cemetery was bequeathed in a will in 1813. The people buried there were mostly free Black people, Applegate said on the video.

The weather had turned much cooler on Tuesday, the day he arrived in Albany. He said he was able to walk 16 miles, from the Village of Kinderhook to East Greenbush. In East Greenbush, he accepted a car ride for the final six miles to Albany.

On his website, Johnston said he began his “Our Walk to Freedom” projects to remember the civil rights marches of the 1950s and ‘60s.

In 2019, he began walks to honor Tubman and others who helped the people who freed themselves by running away.

But this long-distance walk to Canada — unlike the weekends-mostly “segment walk” in South Jersey — gave him “a sense of what it feels like to be homeless, to need the assistance of others from time to time. To not have a place to lay your head down, or go to the bathroom, or brush your teeth.”

He appreciated the kindness of a waitress who picked up his tab when she heard about his project when he stopped for lunch at the Schodack Diner in Castleton-on-Hudson on Tuesday, before he reached Albany about 2:30 p.m. He thanked the waitress on his Our Walk to Freedom Facebook page: “She completely surprised me with her generosity.”

“When I arrived in Albany I had gone three or four days without a shower, my clothes were dirty,” Johnston told The Inquirer on Thursday.

“You experience the stares of others. The difference is, I have this big sign on my back that says where I’m going. That answers the questions. They see me with the backpack and with these hiking sticks.”

» READ MORE: At South Jersey riverfront, a 165-mile Walk to Freedom comes to joyous end

Anne Liske, a caretaker at the Albany meeting house, said she had already sent out emails to a list of friends groups in New York, to tell them an “interesting person is heading your way.”

On Friday, Johnston started out heading west along New York State Route 5, toward Syracuse and Auburn, the city that was home to Tubman tor 54 years, until her death in 1913.

Liske and her husband, also a caretaker at Friends Meeting, agreed to host Johnston. She said she was motivated partly by her volunteer experience at a homeless shelter in New York City..

“For me, it is a spirit-led hospitality that says when someone needs a place to stay, you do the best you can,” she said.