Professor of History and Department co-chair Roy Finkenbine had an article, “When the First Freedom Seekers Came to Fort Wayne,” published in the Fall 2024 issue of Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History. It recovers the story of freedom seekers Bill and John, based on Finkenbine’s rediscovery of a 1799 runaway slave advertisement, pushing back by three decades the arrival of runaway slaves from the South in this part of the Old Northwest.