Historian John Michael Vlach looks at the stables at Hampton National Historic Site. He talks about the work slaves did in these stables, including as stablehands and jockeys, during the antebellum period.
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Dianne Swann-Wright, Director of African-American and Special Programs at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, looks at what artifacts found at Monticello reveal about the lives of slaves on the estate and the questions such artifacts raise.
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This one-week workshop provides teachers with fresh perspectives on the complex dynamics of the American Revolution in the Southern backcountry, a place where longstanding hostilities between American settlers erupted into a full-scale civil war between Loyalists and Patriots. This program will make use of the rich historical resources in upstate South Carolina. Participants will visit Walnut Grove Plantation and the living history museum at Historic Brattonsville in order to better understand day-to-day life in the backcountry at the time of the Revolution. Then they will tour the battlefields at Kings Mountain, Cowpens, and Ninety-Six to learn more about the nature of backcountry warfare. They will also explore the ways that art, archaeological evidence, and material culture can help increase student engagement with the subject matter. They will examine the war's impact on the region's white women and on its free and enslaved African Americans. A veteran history teacher will serve as master teacher for the workshop, advising participants on ways they can use the content and resources they gain at the workshop in their own classrooms.
Participants in this workshop will travel throughout the Delta as they visit sites where significant events occurred. They will discuss and learn about issues involving civil rights and political leadership, immigrants' experiences in the Delta, the Blues, the great migration, agriculture, and the Mississippi River, among other things. They will sample Delta foods, visit local museums, and listen to the Blues. Field trips will roam as far as Greenville, Greenwood, and Memphis, with stops in between.
Historian John Michael Vlach briefly reflects on how slaves constructed communities for themselves independent of their masters' lives at estates such as Hampton National Historic Site.
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Historian John Michael Vlach briefly considers how the different living quarters at Hampton National Historic Site reflect the status hierarchy of their occupants, from the main estate mansion to the overseer's house to the slave quarters.
Historian John Michael Vlach very briefly introduces the overseer's house and slave quarters at Hampton National Historic Site.
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Historian John Michael Vlach compares the grounds of the main estate at Hampton National Historic Site and the slave quarters and working areas of the same estate. He points out what the differences in organization and aesthetic emphasis indicate about the division of society on the estate.
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Historian John Michael Vlach very quickly reviews the architecture of the Hampton Estate in Towson, MD. Built in 1745, the estate's owners worked in various industries and farming ventures, and owned many slaves.
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From the BackStory website:
"Historian David Blight narrates a reenactment of Frederick Douglass' 1852 speech, 'The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro,' widely known as one of the greatest Abolitionist speeches ever. In it, Douglass highlights the hypocrisy of celebrating liberty in a nation that allows slavery."