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Events
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CAMBRIDGE, MARYLAND: HARRIET TUBMAN REMEMBRANCE DAY, MARCH 10, 2004
The African American Tourism Council of Maryland and the Harriet Tubman
Organization are sponsoring the 4th Annual Harriet Tubman Remembrance Day
in Cambridge Maryland, on March 10, 2004. The program begins with a prayer
service at 9:00 AM in the Harriet Tubman Memorial Park, followed by an URR
worship, a luncheon, featuring Dr. Bradley Skelcher, Director of the
Graduate Program in Historic Conservation at Delaware State University, a
tour of Tubman related sites, and an evening workshop service at Bethel AME
Church.
For information contact Mr. Fields at 410-783-5469 or email the Council at
[email protected] for additional information. The Harriet Tubman
Organization will host the 4th Annual Harriet Tubman Day Awards Banquet on
Saturday, March 13, 2004 at the Elks Lodge in Cambridge ($25). Call
410-228-0401 for tickets.
I understand that pre-registration is required, and the registration fee is
$65.00.
NEW YORK STATE: HERITAGE TRAIL APPLICATIONS FOR URR SITES DUE MARCH 31, 2004
Heritage New York is searching for sites to be included in the New York
State Underground Railroad Heritage Trail program. To be eligible sites
must be accessible to the general public. Sites can be connected to a
major Underground Railroad personality, a freedom seeker, or those who
assisted them, persons influential in the anti-slavery movement, or with
slavery in New York State. A related program for "Regional Interpretative
Centers" is under development. Applications are due March 31, 2004.
For information, contact Heritage New York, Corning Tower, Room 2328,
Albany, New York 12242, or telephone 518-473-8591, or
www.HeritageNY.state.ny.us Cordell Reaves is the coordinator of the
Underground Railroad Heritage Trail for New York State.
ONTARIO, CANADA: THIRD ANNUAL GREY COUNTY BLACK HISTORY EVENT, SATURDAY,
APRIL 17, 2004
The third annual Grey County Black History Event, "Heritage Uncovered:
Black Pioneers," will be held at the Durham Arena and Community Centre,
Durham, Ontario, on Saturday, April 17, 2004, from 8:30 to
4:30. Presentations include Karolyn Smarts, who will discuss her recent
book, Goin' to Freedom Land which tells the story about Thornton and Lucie
Blackburn, freedom seekers from Kentucky who settled in Toronto; Paul
Cornfield and Jane Gibson on educational curriculum; Bryan and Shannon
Price, from Buxton, on women in the URR, and Tim Crawford, on Black
pioneers in Oro Township, near Barrie.
There is a registration fee for the event, including coffee breaks and lunch.
For information, contact Greta Kennedy, Durham and District Chamber of
Commerce, P.O. Box 800, Durham, Ontario, N0G 1R0, telephone 519-369-3119,
or e-mail [email protected] or the Grey County Archives, telephone
519-369-3245, or e-mail [email protected]
See also the Grey County
Archives web site www.greycounty.on.ca/
archives
Related events include an opening reception for Northern Terminus: The
African Canadian History Journal, Vol. 2, on Friday night, with a
presentation by Ken Turner on locating and restoring burial sites, and a
bus tour of local Black Heritage sites on Sunday, April 18th, sponsored by
Heritage Pathways.
SUGAR GROVE, PENNSYLVANIA: JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION, JUNE 19, 2004
[Information abstracted from an article in the Warren, Pennsylvania, Times
Observer, written by Victoria Barone]
Sugar Grove was the site of an anti-slavery convention in June 1854. The
"Juneteenth" celebration on June 19, 2004, beginning at 9 AM and lasting
until 7 PM will feature period music, reenactors of abolitionist speakers
and URR participants, authentic food, and a reenactment of the 1854
convention with music by the Sugar Grove Anti-Slavery Choir.
[From the newspaper story:] Information about the event can be found on the
website www.kinzua.net/sugargrove
and on the website
NorthernAlleghenies.com link to Sugar Grove Library.org. Select tickets and
Tickets to Tea at the Miller Mansion may be reserved beginning May 3 at
Northern Alleghenies Vacation Region, 726-1222, or the Warren County
Historical Society, 723-1795. No tickets are necessary for events held in
the convention tent. Package tickets are available to tour companies while
supplies last.
NEW AND FORTHCOMING UNDERGROUND RAILROAD RELATED PUBLICATIONS
I haven't even had time to skim the three new biographies of Harriet Tubman
yet.
Tom Colarco's Underground Railroad in the Adirondack Region (McFarland and
Company) has just been published. I haven't seen a copy yet, but have some
very favorable comments on the book from people who have.
Henry Lewis Gates Jr. and Hollis Robbins have edited a book of essays,
In
Search of Hannah Crafts: Critical Essays in the Bondwoman's Narrative. This
is a companion to the Bondwoman's Narrative, a newly discovered manuscript
from the 1850s, first published in 2002. Gates and others have made a good
case the author of the Narrative was an African-American woman with direct
experience of slavery.
Jean Fagan Yellen, who has done extensive work on Hannah Jacob's
Incidents
in the Life of a Slave Girl has written a biography, Harriet Jacobs: A
Life. Twenty years ago, most historians, if they even knew of Incidents
in the Life of a Slave Girl were uncertain of its authorship (some ascribed
it to Lydia M. Child) or its authenticity. The recovery of this book as an
authentic narrative of events is a story in itself, and owes much to
Yellen's persistent efforts to document Harriet Jacobs.
For educators, Susan Hoffman Fishman, "The Escape of the Pearl," in
Social Education, 67(5), September 2003, pp. 261-266, presents an example of
"teaching about slavery with primary source documents" based on the an
attempted mass escape from Washington, DC, in 1848. While directed at
middle school and high school students, the critical approach to using
primary source documents, that often present different and conflicting
accounts of the same event, might be a useful tool for training novice URR
researchers of all ages.
Available on-line on the Afrolumens Project web-site, is George Nagle's excellent
paper from the Temple University Underground Railroad Conference held on
February 13, 2004, "Kidnapping and Murder: How the Rachel Parker Case
Galvanized Pennsylvania Popular Opinion Against the Fugitive Slave Law"
http://www.afrolumens.org/ugrr/parker.html
If you have not already done so, check out the other resources on
Afrolumens. The focus is on African-Americans and the Underground Railroad
in South Central, PA, but it is also a resource for those topics in
Pennsylvania generally, and a model for a grass roots effort to facilitate
and coordinate research on these important topics.
Keith Griffler, Front Line of Freedom: African-Americans and the Forging of
the Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley (Lexington: University Press of
Kentucky, 2004).
Not yet out, but expected to be published by Stackpole Books this summer is
William J. Switala, The Underground Railroad in Delaware, Maryland and West
Virginia. A new edition of James McGowan's Station Master on the
Underground Railroad: The Life and Letters of Thomas Garrett is due to be
published by McFarland and Co. by the end of the year.
Christopher Densmore, March 2, 2004
Friends Historical Library
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