Art by Elisabeth Vines
If we allow our history to be whitewashed, the richness and strength of our nation will disappear
By Melissa Hale-Spencer
Altamont Enterprise
Thursday, April 2, 2026 – 20:07
We first met Mary Liz Stewart in the 1990s when she was teaching in rural Berne-Knox-Westerlo. Her fifth-graders were engaged in original research on slavery in the Hilltowns. Her students also learned about the Underground Railroad in which a network of Americans helped enslaved people to freedom.
She was a teacher who did not view her students as passive listeners; she turned them into active learners.
Mary Liz and her husband, Paul Stewart, founded the Underground Railroad History Project, which purchased and saved from ruin the brick rowhouse on Livingston Avenue in Albany’s Arbor Hill where Black abolitionists Harriet and Stephen Myers had once lived.
Stephen Myers was the editor of The Northern Star and Freeman’s Advocate. “We devote all our time to the care of the oppressed who come among us,” he wrote in 1860.
Over time, the Stewarts’ vision grew, largely supported by volunteers and grants. We wrote about the archeological treasures unearthed in the neighborhood and displayed in the Myers House. We wrote about the programs for youth, the Young Abolitions, and about the many conferences the Stewarts hosted.
The Stewarts planned for a $12 million center to be built next to the Meyers House to serve as an educational and interpretive center.
They arranged to use the salvaged timbers of a 1700s barn — from a farm where slaves had worked — to build an entry to the modern center.
Now, the Underground Railroad History Project has garnered national attention after Lawyers for Good Government on March 20 filed a federal suit on the project’s behalf.
The Washington Post covered the story the day after the suit was filed and other media followed, including national networks.
As we read through the 40-page suit filed by Nina Loewenstein, we remembered a conversation we had with Paul Stewart eight years ago as we sat in the parlor of the Myers House.