Picture the last stop on the road to freedom, just across this river. Detroit, code-named Midnight on the Underground Railroad, was the final American ground for thousands of freedom seekers escaping slavery; just across this narrow river lay Canada and liberty. The Gateway to Freedom International Memorial, sculpted by Edward Dwight and dedicated in 2001, shows a group of self-emancipated people gazing toward the Canadian shore as a conductor points the way across the water.
Historians estimate that as many as forty-five thousand people passed through Detroit toward freedom in the decades before the Civil War, ferried over by boat, often at night, by a network of Black and white abolitionists. A matching monument stands on the Windsor side, the two sculptures reaching toward each other across the river. Look across the water, the same crossing those travelers studied in the dark, and imagine the relief of touching the far bank as a free person.