Public notices of availability of two African Americans for purchase, a sixteen-year-old girl, not named, and a forty-three-year-old man, Martin Barker. Parallel to the Underground Railroad, there existed a "reverse underground railroad," which, as in this item, targeted African Americans in Kaskaskia, Illinois, and other places on the southern and western Illinois borders. State "black codes" required African Americans to provide proof they were not fugitives; those who could not could be sold into slavery.
