Engaging with the Legacies of Northern Slavery
April 5, 2025, 9:15 am - April 5, 2025, 5:45 pm
Deerfield Community Center 16 Memorial Street Deerfield, MA 01342 + Google Map
Category: Seminars Virtual & Hybrid
Click here to purchase a virtual only registration. Click here to purchase an in-person only registration (including choosing the option for lunch and/or the free walking tour).
Hybrid Conference
Historic Deerfield is pleased to announce a one-day conference, “Engaging with the Legacies of Northern Slavery,” in collaboration with the Witness Stones Project, Inc. to mark the completion of the second phase of installing 35 Witness Stones Memorials™ that honor the enslaved people who lived in the community. In Deerfield, by the mid-eighteenth century over a third of the households on the town’s mile-long street included at least one enslaved person, and the Witness Stone Memorials™ mark the ongoing attempt to recover and share as much as we can about their lives and stories. The invited speakers will share their work on various aspects of slavery’s long legacy in the north.
The program will take place on Saturday, April 5, 2025, at the Deerfield Community Center at 16 Memorial Street in Deerfield, Massachusetts. This is a hybrid program that will take place both in person and virtually via Zoom; registrants will receive a link to the recorded presentations.
Pricing
- Virtual Programming: $35
- In-Person Programming: $50 (does not include lunch)
- In-Person Programming With Lunch: $86 (includes a sandwich buffet at the Deerfield Inn)
- In-Person “Slavery, Labor, and Freedom” Walking Tour: free
Registration
- Click here to purchase a virtual only registration.
- Click here to purchase an in-person only registration (including choosing the option for lunch and/or registering for the free walking tour).
Conference Schedule
Saturday, April 5, 2025
9:15–9:30 a.m. Welcome: John Davis, President and CEO of Historic Deerfield, and Pat Wilson Pheanious, Executive Director of Witness Stones, Inc.
9:30–10:15 a.m. “From Lorenzo Greene to Gloria McCahon Whiting: The History, Historiography, and Future of New England Slavery Studies”
Jerrad Pacatte, Associate Research Fellow with the “Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery Project” at Harvard University
10:15–11 a.m. “A Constellation of Hope & Freedom: Literary Activism, A Black American Tradition”
Erika Slocumb, Director of Interpretation and Visitor Experience at the Stowe Center for Literary Activism in Hartford, CT, and Ph.D. candidate of Black Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst
11–11:20 a.m. Break
11:20 a.m.–12:05 p.m. “From Chains to Change”
Anika Lopes, Founder and President, Ancestral Bridges Foundation Inc.
12:05–2 p.m. Lunch and time for exploration of the Witness Stones
2–2:45 p.m. “Discard all associations that bind [you]”: Rethinking the relationship between slavery in Deep South and Western Massachusetts”
Dr. Ousmane Power-Greene, Professor of History at Clark University
2:45–3:30 p.m. “Interpreting Slavery as Part of the 21st-Century Civil Rights Movement”
Kristin Gallas, Founder and Principal, MUSE Consulting
3:30–3:50 p.m. Break
3:50–4:35 p.m. Perspectives from Pat Wilson Pheanious, Executive Director of Witness Stones, Inc.
4:35–4:45 p.m. Concluding remarks
5:00–5:45 p.m. Optional: “Slavery, Labor, and Freedom” Walking Tour. This tour is included in the program but requires pre-registration.
Click here to purchase a virtual only registration. Click here to purchase an in-person only registration (including choosing the option for lunch and/or the free walking tour.)