Betty DeRamus to speak at Women in Communications February event

Author Betty DeRamus will share stirring accounts from her breakthrough books on Black history and the Underground Railroad, at a location that was an active "railroad" stop, at the Feb. 27 Women in Communications-Detroit meeting.

The event will be held at Universalist Unitarian Church, 25301 Halsted, Farmington Hills, which has a history with the Underground Railroad that is documented by church historians. (Read more on Farmington Patch.)

Though best known as a longtime columnist and Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Detroit News, DeRamus is an African American history lecturer and celebrated for two groundbreaking non-fiction books about little-known heroes and heroines of the Underground Railroad, both published by Atria Books, a division of Simon and Schuster. 

Her first book was "Forbidden Fruit: Love Stories from the Underground Railroad" (2005). This is a collection of true stories about black and interracial couples who risked their lives to avoid separation during the slavery era. Its very real characters include a North Carolina man who carried his wife to freedom on his bruised and beaten back, a free Virginian who became a slave to remain with his enslaved wife and the 161 blacks who once hid in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Forbidden Fruit spent nine months on Essence Magazine's bestseller list and has been used as a textbook.

Her second book is "Freedom by Any Means: True Stories of Cunning and Courage on the Underground Railroad" (2009). The Raw Sistaz Review named it one of the best African American books of 2009, and it was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Foundation's 2010 Legacy Award. It includes the saga of a Maryland man who stole his family from the auction block where they were about to be sold. Other characters include a Washington, D.C. fugitive slave freed because a general liked her cooking and the Cass County, Michigan freedom fighters who found a legal way to defeat Kentucky slave catchers.

Cost for this event is $10 members; $15 nonmembers, $5 students. Includes tea, coffee and dessert. Register by February 24, 2011 by email at info@womcomdetroit.org on the organization's Web site womcomdetroit.org or by phone at 866-385-1784.