06/19/2026
Today, we honor Juneteenth: the day in 1865 when the last enslaved people in Galveston, Texas learned they were free, more than two years after emancipation had already been declared. That gap between what is owed and what is reachable is still a gap we’re trying to close today.
If you’d sit and stay awhile, we’d like to share a little about this region’s history, the communities that helped each other, and about the freedom traditions that still wind through these hills today.
When abortion became illegal in West Virginia overnight, we crossed those same mountains and found ourselves on the grounds of what would become WHC’s second clinic in Cumberland, MD. Today, half of the patients we serve in Cumberland come from states with total abortion bans or restrictions.
Long before WHC MD existed, Mountain Maryland and Mountain Mama were already looking out for each other. About two hundred years ago, the mountains that split WV and MD marked the passageway that carried freedom seekers north along the Underground Railroad. Emmanuel Episcopal Church, right up the road from our MD clinic, was a safe point — the tunnels still wind through the cellar walls.
That same spirit of safe harbor runs through our own history.
This month, WHC WV, celebrates 50 years — that clinic started in the rectory of a friendly ally — Reverend Jim Lewis, who offered our founders a safe meeting place when they could not find one elsewhere. Different decades, different doors, same instinct: when our people need refuge, this region answers.
We do not claim the history of the Underground Railroad as our own. We claim the tradition of
community care and safe harbor as our inheritance, and our responsibility to carry forward.
Juneteenth marks freedom delayed, but never denied. The playbooks being used to strip away our bodily autonomy, dignity, and self determination are old. To win this fight, we must honor the communities among us who have made this journey before and who hold the keys to our collective liberation.
🖤 Happy Juneteenth, y’all. Link in our stories to read the full article!
