Author and Harriet Tubman Descendant Visits A&M-Commerce

The Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at A&M-Commerce hosted special guest speaker Michele Jones Galvin at Ferguson Auditorium on March 5. Galvin spoke to attendees and signed copies of her book, Beyond the Underground: Aunt Harriet, Moses of Her People.

Following her speech at Ferguson Auditorium, the author attended a luncheon at Rayburn Student Center as well as a group discussion and book signing with A&M-Commerce faculty and students.

Galvin and her mother, Joyce Stokes Jones, co-authored their creative work of nonfiction, which was published in 2013. The work is based on genealogical research and their family ties to Harriet Ross Tubman, a central figure of the Underground Railroad. It chronicles the family saga from the survival of the Middle Passage to slavery on the eastern shore of Maryland to freedom in Canada, and then settling in upstate New York. Told from the perspective of descendants, the book portrays the life, times and accomplishments of the famed abolitionist.