CINCINNATI – Thirty years after its founding by a small group of individuals, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is celebrating a generation of impact while looking forward to its next 30 years. The Freedom Center’s weekend-long Freedom Festival in May will feature free and ticketed events to honor the past and look to the future.
“The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is a bridge between the past and present, where the lessons of the Underground Railroad inform the continuing fight for inclusive freedom today,” said Woodrow Keown, Jr., president & COO of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. “Today, we still stand as a beacon of freedom, on the very ground where so many people first felt free. And we will continue to do so until a more free future for everyone is a reality.”
The Freedom Center was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) in May 1995 and then embarked on a seven-year fundraising campaign to make the museum a reality. The symbolic location on the banks of the Ohio River was chosen in 2000, the same year the Freedom Center acquired its first artifact – an original slave pen from Maysville, Kentucky. Fourteen thousand people attended the groundbreaking in 2002, including First Lady Laura Bush and Muhammad Ali. Two years later, 20,000 more celebrated the opening of the Freedom Center alongside Oprah Winfrey and Angela Bassett.
“When the Freedom Center opened, it filled a void in our nation’s cultural heritage,” said Keown. “For the first time, it pulled these voices from the shadows so they could inspire a new generation to pursue freedom, and it promised that we, the Freedom Center, would help be a conductor in that journey.”
In the Freedom Center’s 30 years, it has welcomed over 2.5 million guests from around the world, hosted over 20 featured exhibitions, earned accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums (2014, reaccreditation in 2024) and been voted among the top three history museums in the country five consecutive years (and ranked #1 in 2023). It has also honored 15 modern-day freedom fighters with its highest honor, the International Freedom Conductor Award. As part of the Freedom Center’s 30th anniversary celebration and Freedom Festival, it will bestow the honor once again at an event on May 24. Tickets for the International Freedom Conductor Awards are available now.
As the Freedom Center looks to its next 30 years and beyond, it will build on its legacy as one of the world’s premier cultural learning institutions with distinct social justice expertise rooted in the principles of the Underground Railroad. In the process, it will continue to evolve into a multifaceted center, influencing movement toward equitable social change.
“Guided by the principles of the Underground Railroad, we are centering our strategy around human beings, focusing on the lived experiences, triumphs and ongoing struggles of those most acutely and disproportionately impacted by systems of marginalization,” added Keown. “We will continue to tell the truth about the past and reimagine a more free and inclusive future for all.”
That vision includes refreshing some of the exhibits and content and opening the Freedom Center’s first new permanent exhibit in 15 years – In This Place. The immersive gallery will explore the historic significance of the Freedom Center’s location on the banks of the Ohio River, where many enslaved people self-liberating on the Underground Railroad took their first steps on free soil. The gallery will feature artifacts and an interactive table where historic moments and stories flow by as if in the river itself. Guests can touch and pull the moments from the river to learn more about them. Historic photos and artifacts punctuate the region’s critical role as a borderland between slave state and free and the ongoing dynamics of justice and injustice that continue to intersect here and across the nation. In This Place will open May 23 as a kickoff to the Freedom Center’s 30th anniversary Freedom Festival.
“The story of the Freedom Center is rooted in this power of place and the legacy of the land we stand on,” added Keown. “This new gallery will serve as an important introduction to the Freedom Center, our region’s history and the stories guests will encounter as they continue their journey through our museum.”
The Freedom Center is also currently developing a groundbreaking social justice exhibit focused on local, regional and national social justice movements from the late 1800s to the present. The exhibit will identify the long historical roots of systems of injustice, including redlining, Indigenous rights and the housing crisis, among others. By illuminating how these systems interconnect, the exhibit will offer ways individuals can work together to take action to dismantle them. The social justice exhibit will open in late 2027.
The Freedom Festival will conclude with a Community Unity Day on Sunday, May 25, featuring free admission, gallery talks, family programming, live music and performances.
More information: freedomcenter.org
