To study, to chronicle and to celebrate the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist movement through preservation, education and research while fulfilling a moral obligation to present truths historically about slavery and the pathways, policy and actions to liberty, freedom and personhood for the enslaved. 

Founded and organized in the fall of 1994 as the Mason County Underground Railroad Museum and African American Research Center, the museum opened Sunday Feb. 5, 1995 in the Visitors Center on Third Street near the Simon Kenton Bridge. A small one room museum, the museum was part of the National Park Service International Field Study to promote preservation of UGRR history.  In June 1995, the museum was incorporated as the National Underground Railroad Museum Inc.  and is a 501(3)c not for profit.

To assume a leadership position in Kentucky as the first nationally established museum dedicated to the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist movment and to continue in the founding principles of preservation, sharing of research and education for the benefit of public education.