BOOK TALK | The Black Woods: Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier with Amy Godine
Sunday, November 12th
From 2 pm - 3 pm
Included with Museum Admission!
About the Book, The Black Woods: Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier:
Gerrit Smith, an upstate abolitionist and heir to an immense land fortune, gifted 3,000 Black New Yorkers with 120,000 acres of Adirondack land hoping to take advantage of the $250 property requirement in New York’s constitution imposed on Black voters in 1821, allowing them to claim the rights of citizenship. Smith's suffrage-seeking plan was endorsed by Frederick Douglass and most leading Black abolitionists. His plan was prescient, anticipating Black suffrage reform, affirmative action, environmental distributive justice, and community-based racial equity more than a century before these were points of public policy. But when the response to Smith's offer fell radically short of his high hopes, Smith's zeal cooled. Timbuctoo, Freemen's Home, Blacksville and other settlements were forgotten. History would marginalize this Black community for 150 years.
About the Author, Amy Godine:
From Saratoga Springs, New York, independent scholar Amy Godine has been writing and speaking about ethnic, migratory, and Black Adirondack history for more than three decades. Exhibits she has curated include Dreaming of Timbuctoo at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in North Elba, New York.