Sanctuaries in the South: Spanish Missions and the Underground Railroad to Mexico

The history of the Underground Railroad, where African Americans fled chattel slavery in hope to find freedom and protection outside of the American deep south is known to most. While the Underground Railroad network that led to the northern U.S. border is well documented, the network that extended south to Mexico remains under researched. This poster will explore how Spanish missions in Texas, particularly Missions San Jose and Los Adaes, played a valuable role in helping African Americans navigate the Underground Railroad to the south. Situated along key trade routes like El Camino Real, these missions provided sanctuary and support that allowed Freedom Seekers to escape over the southern U.S. border in the nineteenth century.

Spanish missions are often associated with Catholic conversion of American Indigenous peoples and colonization. However, they also served as spaces of resistance against chattel slavery since local mission communities facilitated the movement of freedom seekers into Mexican territories. Primary source material reveals that in the 1830s, five enslaved men from Louisiana sought refuge at Mission San Jose, where Mexican authorities and local allies in the mission community intervened to protect them from hired slave catchers. Additionally, sources show that by the late 1850s, newspapers published ads written by enslavers who accused the San Antonio Mission community of helping African Americans find freedom. These incidents highlight the missions’ involvement in the broader Underground Railroad network.

This research also places the southern Underground Railroad within the larger context of U.S.-Mexico relations. Mexico’s protection of Freedom Seekers created a barrier for the United States’ economic and political interests. The presence of Spanish missions along these routes underscores how colonial institutions, despite their complex histories, became, at times, locations of resistance against slavery.

This poster will highlight the primary source material discovered thus far and put them within the context of the existing scholarship about the Underground Railroad to the south to highlight the Missions’ role in facilitating escape for Freedom Seekers. By showcasing contemporary nineteenth-century material, personal narratives for formerly enslaved African Americans, and official correspondence between diplomats across the Southern U.S. border, this project aims to create a social history that reveals a hidden side to a long-standing colonial institution.

As a first-year master’s student, this research is part of an ongoing project that seeks to expand the historical understanding of the Underground Railroad beyond its northern route. By examining the role of Spanish missions in Texas, this project contributes to a growing body of academic work on Texan resistance to slavery African American and Mexican solidarity.