Willis Augustus Hodges, the publisher of a the weekly newspaper, The Ram's Horn and an Underground Railroad agent, Hodges helped escaping African Americans move to and establish the settlement, Blacksville. They used the land granted to them by Peterboro abolitionist Gerrit Smith. Gerritt Smith’s antebellum “scheme of justice and benevolence” championing black voting rights and the redistribution of land to 3,000 free blacks.

Henry H. Garnett was also a recipient of Smith's land grant. Smith in a political move to circumvent the property requirement for poor blacks and whites, gave more than three thousand land grants, an averaging of 40 acres apiece. 

Professor Kwame Zulu Shabazz on The Gist of Freedom as we continue our reading and discussion about the book, The Black Abolitionists, by Benjamin Quarles. Call in and join the discussion with panelists, Ty El-Gray (A Black Woman's Smile) and Preston Washington (Genealogist)

The Ram's Horn was a weekly newspaper published and edited by Willis A. Hodges, a free Black born in Virginia. His family moved to New York in the mid-1830s after Nat Turner's rebellion prompted the Virginia legislature to severely limit the