This symposium brings together archaeologists who study nineteenth-century free African American communities. Speakers will discuss how they have approached researching these communities, many of which were bulwarks in the abolition and early civil rights movements and places where residents formed positive social connections both within and across racial lines. Yet, these important communities have been largely left out of mainstream history. Presenters will explain what their research reveals about these communities and will collectively discuss what these communities, in turn, might reveal to us about living in our own divided time.
Peter
N. Miller
Bard
Graduate Center
Welcome
Meredith
B. Linn
Bard
Graduate Center
Introduction
Michael
J. Gall
Richard
Grubb and Associates, Inc.
Public and Private: Identity Construction and Free African
American Life in Central Delaware, 1770s–1820s
Christopher
N. Matthews
Montclair
State University
A Creole Synthesis: Archaeology of the Mixed Heritage Silas Tobias
Site in Setauket, New York
Christopher
Lindner
Bard
College
Germantown’s Parsonage: Centering Spirituality in a
Nineteenth-Century African American Community
Q&A
/ Discussion
Joan
H. Geismar
Archaeological
Consultant
Skunk Hollow and Weeksville: Comparing Two Nineteenth-Century
African American Communities
Rebecca
Yamin
Commonwealth
Heritage Group, Inc.
The Lives and Times of Josiah and Joshua Eddy: Barbers and AME
Church Ministers in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia
Meredith
B. Linn
Bard
Graduate Center
Nan
A. Rothschild
Barnard
College and Columbia University
Diana
diZerega Wall
City
College and the City University of New York
Seneca Village: New Insights about a Forgotten Nineteenth-Century African
American Community
Q&A
/ Discussion
Alexandra Jones
Archaeology in the Community
Response
Nedra
K. Lee
University
of Massachusetts Boston
Hiding in Plain Sight: Critical Race Theory and the Use of Space
at the Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead, Manchaca, Texas
Christopher
Fennell
University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Resilience and Racism in a Nineteenth-Century American Heartland:
New Philadelphia and the Vagaries of Prejudice
Christopher
P. Barton
Francis
Marion University
“Stretching the Soup with a Little Water”: Race, Class, and
Improvisation at the Black Community of Timbuctoo, New Jersey
Q&A
/ Discussion
Allison
McGovern
VHB
Engineering, Surveying, Landscape Architecture, and Geology, PC
“We Know Who We Are”: The Politics of Heritage and Preservation in
East Hampton’s “Historically Black” Communities
Paul
R. Mullins
Indiana
University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Civility and Citizenship: Narrating Free Black Heritage and
Materiality
Matthew
M. Palus
The
Ottery Group and the University of Maryland, College Park
Cultural Resource Management Perspectives on African American
Struggle with Heritage in Metropolitan Washington, DC
Q&A
/ Discussion
Whitney Battle-Baptiste
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Response
