History, Natural History & the Arts
On a cold, snowy January evening in 1874, Anna Elizabeth Dickinson became one of the first women of national prominence to speak on women’s suffrage in Clinton County, NY. Those gathering to hear her at the Palmer Hall, located upstairs at 60 Margaret Street in downtown Plattsburgh, were described as the most intellectual and cultivated in the community.
The crowd that night would have known her reputation. [Read more…] about Anna Elizabeth Dickinson: ‘America’s Civil War Joan of Arc’
Mary Mildred Botts Williams (1847–1921) was a light-skinned Black child born into enslavement in Virginia. She became identified in the popular imagination with the character Ida May, the fictional kidnapped white child in Mary Hayden Pike’s novel, Ida May: A Story of Things Actual and Possible (1854). Mary was used as an example of a “white slave” in the years before the Civil War. [Read more…] about Slavery & Race: Mary Mildred Botts Williams, 1847–1921
Recently retired Cornell University Professor Gerard Aching will present on his research and coordination of the Underground Railroad Research Project, which highlights the extensive roots of the network in Central New York, Western New York, and the Finger Lakes Region. [Read more…] about New Digital Resources for Underground Railroad History Research
In a recent article in the Washington Post, author Sydney Trent narrates the story of Stephanie Gilbert, a descendant of Oliver C. Gilbert, and her quest to learn of her ancestor and visit his place of birth and enslavement. The article briefly discusses O.C. Gilbert’s life in Saratoga Springs, NY, from about 1860 to 1876, when he moved to Pennsylvania.
Saratoga Springs offered many opportunities for employment, and it was said that while many of the Southern gentleman brought their slaves with them as they took in the season at The Spa, many of the Black men and women serving them were probably former enslaved people who had run for their freedom. Moreover, while Gilbert’s primary legacy is as a lecturer and musician, his political activism both before and while living in Saratoga Springs places him in the company of many prominent abolitionists, businessmen and politicians who continued the fight for racial equality as Jim Crow laws were becoming commonplace in America. [Read more…] about O.C. Gilbert: Speaker, Musician, Black Community Organizer in Saratoga
A $2 million state grant will help launch the expansion of the Underground Railroad Education Center (UREC), which is currently housed in the former 19th-century home of Black abolitionists Harriet and Stephen Myers, a onetime stop on the Underground Railroad located in Albany‘s Arbor Hill neighborhood. [Read more…] about Albany Underground Railroad Center Receives $2 Million Grant
On this episode of the New York Minute in History podcast, Devin Lander and Lauren Roberts tell the story of the Florence Farming and Lumber Association, a settlement of free African Americans in Florence, Oneida County beginning in 1846. [Read more…] about The Florence Farming Association
The United Order of Tents Eastern District #3, the oldest Black women’s fraternal organization in the United States, has received a grant from the National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. The fund’s grants are designed to advance ongoing preservation activities for historic places such as homes, museums, and landscapes that represent African American cultural heritage. [Read more…] about United Order of Tents Wins Historic Preservation Grant
In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World, Kyera Singleton, the Executive Director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts, joins host Liz Covart to investigate the story of slavery and freedom within the first state in the United States to legally abolish slavery. [Read more…] about Freedom and Slavery in Massachusetts
Juneteenth is the commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States. The origins of the commemoration date back to June 19, 1865, when enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, first heard that the Civil War had ended and they were free. [Read more…] about Juneteenth Resources and Information
The basic objective of the new Locating Slavery’s Legacies database (LSLdb) is to collect information about monuments and memorials identified with the Civil War and Confederacy on the campuses of American colleges. This information will in analysis and understanding of the impact of pseudohistorical Lost Cause movements on higher education in the United States in the 160 years since emancipation and the end of the war. [Read more…] about Project Seeks to Document Confederacy & Civil War Memorials on College Campuses