'Underground Railroad' at music camp

Musician and educator Charles Kennedy Jr. works with students at the Summer Music Camp on a rap song, with 1860-era lyrics. Students will perform Friday night at the Austin Dam Memorial Park.

More than a dozen music students have been retracing the path of the Underground Railroad through northcentral Pennsylvania and gaining an appreciation of runaway slaves' plight in the process.

They've also been learning pre-Civil War spirituals from the South. They'll close out the two-week Summer Music Camp with a Friday night appearance as one of the opening acts at the Austin Dam Memorial Park during the fifth annual Dam Show music festival.

Students have been studying and rehearsing for two weeks under the direction of the internationally acclaimed Charles Kennedy Jr. For the past 30 years, Kennedy has interrupted his performing schedule to work with children in workshops and assemblies, often with an emphasis on the Underground Railroad.

Coudersport PTSA and Potter County Fine Arts Council are sponsoring the program, in cooperation with the Austin Dam Memorial Assn.

Kennedy gathered information about the Potter County connection to abolition in order to make the Summer Music Camp locally relevant. On Tuesday, long Coudersport historian Bob Currin accompanied Kennedy and the students on a guided tour of known Underground Railroad routes and refuges.

Several volunteers, including retired music teacher Gloria Sevinsky Richardson, have been assisting Kennedy.

Potter and McKean counties provided an important link on an Underground Railroad line that ran from Hagerstown, Md., up the Susquehanna River, branching off at various points. From Coudersport, the line ran out Steer Brook Road to Millport, Ceres and into Angelica, N. Y., where it branched in different directions to the Canadian border.