The final programs of the Black History in Upstate New York series created by Colgate University graduate and Upstate Institute Fellow Victoria Basulto will be posted online from August 23rd through 26th.
These short online programs highlight individuals, events, and places in Upstate New York central to movements like abolitionism, civil rights, and women’s suffrage movement.
The first program, The Quest for Enfranchisement: Timbuctoo (est. 10 minutes), on Monday, August 23rd, will provide an introduction to the settlement of Timbuctoo located in the Adirondacks. Victoria Basulto will discuss how in 1846, the abolitionist Gerrit Smith decided to divide and gift 120,000 acres of land to Black Americans living in New York State to enfranchise them. At the time, Black Americans needed to own $250 of real estate to vote in New York State while white men only required $150.
Louisa M. Jacobs and the Universal Suffrage Tour (est. 20-30 minutes) on Tuesday, August 24th will be led by Susan Goodier, PhD., Assistant Professor of History at the State University of New York at Oneonta and author of No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti- Suffrage Movement and co-author of Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State. In this presentation, Dr. Goodier will speak about Louisa Matilda Jacobs, daughter of Harriet Jacobs, who authored Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and her tour of Upstate New York with the American Equal Rights Association seeking Universal suffrage. Dr. Goodier will speak about the tour, the people who organized and aided it, and the experience of Louisa Jacobs herself. Dr. Goodier will be drawing from current research, specifically from her ongoing manuscript project “Networks of Activism: Black Women in the New York State Suffrage Movement.”
I’ll Write Their Names: My Family in Slavery & Slavery in My Writing (20-30 minutes) on Wednesday, August 25th will be led by Kyle Bas, Assistant Professor of Theater at Colgate University, Associate Artistic Director at Syracuse Stage, and was the 2019/20 Susan P. Stroman Visiting Playwright at the University of Delaware. Bass, the author of the critically acclaimed Possessing Harriet, will discuss what it means to be an African American writer with a deep connection to the past and a place.
The final program Heaven and Peterboro (est. 20-30 minutes) on Thursday, August 26th will be led by Norman K. Dann, researcher and biographer of Gerrit Smith and the head docent at the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark located in Peterboro, NY. He will end the “Black History in Upstate New York series” with a presentation whose title was inspired by the abolitionist Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, who is quoted as having said to Frederick Douglass, ‘There are yet two places where slaveholders cannot come, Heaven and Peterboro.” Dann will discuss the history of the Gerrit Smith Estate, located in Peterboro, as a stop in the Underground Railroad and some of the individuals who came across its grounds.
The program is funded by the Kathryn W. Davis Projects for Peace fellowship, awarded to one Colgate University student each summer to facilitate a student-led project aiming to promote peace.
Programs are uploaded daily on the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum website and Youtube Channel.
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