LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A southern Indiana church has installed a sculpture that recalls the evils of slavery --and the legacy of those who worked to overcome it.
A limestone sculpture of Lucy Higgs Nichols is located in the Underground Railroad Gardens behind the Second Baptist Church in New Albany.
Nichols was a slave who was owned by a family in Tennessee. She escaped in 1862 and ran to a regiment of Indiana volunteers encamped nearby.
"She stayed with them throughout the war -- became their nurse," said Jerry Finn of Friends of the Town Clock Church. "And when they came back to New Albany, she came back with them. She stayed here and was a member here. She was also the first African American woman to get a pension from Congress for her nursing in the Civil War."
She died in 1915 and is buried in New Albany.
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