Scholar Emmanuel M. Obiechina talks about his research into the recorded life stories of Africans in the U.S. and England in the 18th and 19th centuries. He focuses on relating these narratives to African literature and African history.
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Charles Fuller discusses his life and motivations as an African-American author. The presentation also includes discussions and performances which bring the testimonies of slaves, soldiers, reporters, and activists from the Civil War to life, focusing on African-American history during the Civil War and African-American memory of the war.
Scholar Emmanuel M. Obiechina talks about his research into the recorded life stories of Africans in the U.S. and England in the 18th and 19th centuries. He focuses on relating these narratives to African literature and African history.
Video and audio options are available.
Three scholars present papers on the history of slavery and the African slave trade in New England. The papers are "The Removal of 'Cannibal Negroes' from New England to Providence Island," "A Colonial Tale of Slavery, Freedom, Contract, and Harvest," and "Unruly Slaves, Uneasy Masters, and Unmerited Favor: Wielding Discipline, Wrestling with Conscience, and the Construction of Race in Puritan New England."
Video and audio options are available.
Three scholars present papers on the history of Native American and African slavery and the slave trade in New England. The papers are "Another Face of Slavery: Indentured Servitude of Native Americans in Southern New England," "Freedom and Conflicts over Class, Gender, and Identity: The Evolving Relationship between Indians and Blacks in Southern New England, 17501870," and "Enslavement and Indians in Southern New England: Unraveling a Hidden History."
Authors Philip McFarland and Debby Applegate trace the lives of the Beechers, a family which included the siblings Henry Ward Beecher, a famous preacher, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Audio and video options are available.
Historian Anthony Sammarcora follows the history of molasses in the 18th-century United States, looking at its importance to the world economy, its connection with the slave trade, and the Boston molasses flood.
Video (with or without captions) and audio options are available.
Historian Dorris Fanelli discusses the site of the first presidential "White House" in Philadelphia and the discovery that George Washington brought many of his slaves to work there. This discovery led to a new kind of public history and the creation of a commemorative site near the Liberty Bell Center.
Historian Kate Clifford Larson reviews the life of Harriet Tubman and Tubman's work in freeing other slaves along the Underground Railroad. Larson focuses on unsimplifying Tubman's life story and presenting it in its complexity and full breadth.
Art historian Abaigeal Duda looks at the work of African-American artist Lucy Cleveland (1780-1866), whose textile sculptures provide a record of the abolition movement prior to and during the Civil War.