During his lifetime, Rev. Josiah Henson’s remarkable life story was closely affiliated with Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which generated outrage about slavery before the Civil War. He was an enslaved man living on a plantation in Montgomery County before he escaped by walking more than 600 miles to Canada with his wife and two youngest children. He later returned to the United States to help other enslaved people escape through the Underground Railroad. A memoir about his life was published three years before Uncle Tom’s Cabin, whose main character bore close resemblances to Henson.

Henson’s legacy endures along with his connections to Montgomery County where the Josiah Henson Museum will open soon in Josiah Henson Park in North Bethesda. In her lecture, Montgomery County senior historian Jamie Kuhns will discuss Henson’s life which is chronicled in her new biography Sharp Flashes of Lightning Come From Black Clouds. A Q&A with the audience will follow the free lecture.