Binghamton -- Mayor Matt Ryan joined community leaders in welcoming the Underground Railroad Exhibit to City Hall’s 2nd Floor Gallery Thursday.

The exhibit, which is organized by the Freedom Trail Project Foundation, features artifacts and other visual portrayals of enslavement, resistance to it, and the paths many took to freedom.

“This exhibit allows us to examine a difficult part of our country’s history,” said the mayor. “In moving our community forward, it is important for us to reflect the experience of enslavement, the legacy of racism, and the continuing struggle to achieve equality and justice for all people.”

Using a variety of materials, the exhibit takes audiences through the history of enslavement in North America, emphasizing that it was both a personal experience and a government-sanctioned institution.

“Slavery was a system of oppression,” said George Sands, the exhibit’s curator.  “Our exhibit displays how that system dehumanized all those who were affected by it. It is a lesson that ideologies of hate and social supremacy can gain wide-spread acceptance, and result in violence. As the exhibit suggests, we must keep that lesson in mind, and learn from it.”