Best of Philly

Kenneth Johnston

Cobbs Creek’s Kenneth Johnston set out in July 2022 on a 400-mile Walk to Freedom, retracing Harriet Tubman’s trek from Harlem through the Hudson River Valley and across New York state before winding up in September at Ontario’s British Methodist Episcopal Church, where the enslaved heroine once worshipped. Back in 2019, Johnston walked 140 miles from the Choptank River in Maryland to Philly, the route Tubman took in 1854 to rescue her brothers. Next up: a 1,000-mile slave trail from Virginia to New Orleans. “I’m not a historian,” says Johnston, who calls himself a “walking artist,” “but I build stories along the way and connect them.”