Lancaster historian awarded for Underground Railroad finds

National Park Service recognizes Randy Harris

• Scott LaMar
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Scott LaMar has worked in both radio and television for more than four decades.
  
  Currently, LaMar is the Host and Executive Producer of The Spark program on WITF-FM, 89.5 & 93.3 in Harrisburg, Pa.
  
  Previously, LaMar was WITF TV’s Sr. Public Affairs producer and produced the station’s award-winning weekly public affairs TV program, Smart Talk.
  
  In addition to his on-air duties, LaMar has moderated political candidate debates, including those for candidates running for Pennsylvania governor and the U.S. Senate and was a regular contributor to BBC World News TV before and after the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
  
  LaMar often emcees or moderates local events and has gone as far as California to emcee a national event.
  
  The American Society of Civil Engineers honored LaMar with their national Excellence in Journalism award in 2020. He has been nominated for five Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards.
  
  LaMar and The Spark have been recognized throughout the Central Pennsylvania community including ADVOZ Lancaster’s “Dignity in Dialogue Award”, the South-Central Assembly’s “Regional Citizen Award” and was named a “Humanitarian Hero” by The Humane Society of the United States/Pennsylvania.
  
  A native of Coatesville, Pa., LaMar has also worked as a broadcast news anchor, sports play-by-play announcer and manager.

Airdate: October 4th, 2023

Lancaster Historian Randy Harris has been recognized by the National Park Service with two prestigious awards for submitting 20 Pennsylvania resources to the Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Listings. He is the first person in the Network to Freedom’s 25-year history to win both the Robert G. Stanton and Wilbur H. Siebert Awards.

These awards may not be familiar to those outside historian circles but they are the Oscars of verifying Underground Railroad sites.

Southeast Pennsylvania was a strategic location for many enslaved people seeking freedom due to its proximity to the slave state of Maryland and free Blacks and Whites working to help the enslaved escape bondage.

Randy Harris explains, “At the end of the revolution when Pennsylvania was forming as a state, creating its own governance structure, the folks at the time had the foresight to create the Gradual Abolition Act of 1780, which was the first unit of government in the Western Hemisphere to begin the dismantling of this horrible institution of slavery in the Western Hemisphere, in the Americas. In doing that as currently, of course, it was gradual. It wasn’t a free get out of slavery writ by anybody. If you were born before 1780, unfortunately, you were enslaved for life. If your “owner” wanted you to remain in that capacity or that status. If you were a child born after that, you had to wait till age 28. And they were all made in sorts of ways that people could barter their time, sell their time, or these even hate to say the word these owners could could claim a monetary effect and sell years of time of someone who was in their indentured servitude. It was, in essence, slavery by another name, but it was at least a glimmer of hope to freedom”.