Mission San José in San Antonio is now one of three sites in Texas connected to the Underground Railroad, new research says.

The National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program and the Organization of American Historians will host a virtual public open house on Thursday to conclude a scholars’ roundtable examining the Underground Railroad in Texas and the southern borderlands.

In this Feb. 2, 2019, photo, provided by the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, is the Eli Jackson Methodist Church and cemetery in San Juan, Texas. It is located on a ranch once operated by Nathaniel and Matilda Jackson, a biracial couple believed to have been "conductors" of the Underground Railroad to Mexico. Across Texas and parts of Louisiana, Alabama, and Arkansas, scholars and preservation advocates are working to piece together a puzzle of a largely forgotten piece of American history: a network that helped thousands of Black slaves escape to Mexico. (David Pike/University of Texas Rio Grande Valley via AP)

It is located on a ranch once operated by Nathaniel and Matilda Jackson, a biracial couple believed to have been "conductors" of the Underground Railroad to Mexico. The two families' ranches served as a stop on the Underground Railroad to Mexico, descendants said. But just how organized the Underground Railroad to Mexico was and what happened to former slaves and those who helped them remains a mystery. The examination of the Underground Railroad to Mexico comes as the U.S. is undergoing a racial reckoning around policing and systemic racism. Some Mexican American families are finding themselves having uncomfortable conversations about race in the wake of their newfound awareness of the Underground Railroad to Mexico.

This photo provided by WROC-TV shows the remnants of a Frederick Douglass statue ripped from its base at a park in Rochester, N.Y., Sunday, July 5, 2020. The statue of abolitionist Douglass was ripped on the anniversary of one of his most famous speeches, delivered in that city in 1852. (Ben Densieski/WROC-TV via AP)ROCHESTER, N.Y. A statue of abolitionist Frederick Douglass was ripped from its base in Rochester on the anniversary of one of his most famous speeches, delivered in that city in 1852. Police said the statue of Douglass was taken on Sunday from Maplewood Park, a site along the Underground Railroad where Douglas and Harriet Tubman helped shuttle slaves to freedom. The statue was found at the brink of the Genesee River gorge about 50 feet from its pedestal, police said.