Having written about the bad things that happened at Helena in recent years, I feel compelled to mention some of the good things. These include the many Civil War interpretive sites throughout this historic port city. As a Civil War history enthusiast, I can easily spend a full day in Helena reading the signage.

My favorite stop is Freedom Park on Biscoe Street, the first site in Arkansas to be designated for inclusion on the National Park Service's National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program.

Signage in the park outlines the journey of Black Arkansans from slavery to freedom. It tells how some former slaves enlisted in the Union Army and participated in the Battle of Helena on July 4, 1863. It also tells of the Black families who followed Union troops into Helena and set up camp there.

In the years after the Civil War--before Jim Crow took hold across the Delta--Helena was among the best places in the South for freed slaves to find work and establish businesses.

Abraham Hugo Miller was one of those former slaves. He was born at Colt in St. Francis County on March 12, 1849. His father, Boyer Miller, had been born in Virginia in 1827. The name of his mother isn't known. His stepmother was Henrietta Miller.

"During the Civil War, Abraham Miller moved with his mother to Helena," Colin Edward Woodward writes for the Central Arkansas Library System's Encyclopedia of Arkansas. "Like his father, he became a drayman, which involved hauling cotton, flour, meat and water on wagons. As a young man, Miller moved to Vicksburg, Miss., to work for a railroad company but spent only a month on the job. He returned to Helena, where he started his own dray business.

"After the death of a horse, which convinced him that handling livestock wasn't a safe profession, he began dealing in real estate, rental property and money lending. In 1872-73, Miller attended public school briefly in Helena before moving to Southland College, a Quaker school about nine miles outside........

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